Phil Goodrich looked positively belligerent, and as he took his stand on the other side of Hodder his father-in-law smiled at him grimly.  Mr. Goodrich took hold of the rector’s arm.

“I missed one or two meetings last spring, Mr. Hodder,” he said, “but I’m going to be on hand after this.  My father, I believe, never missed a vestry meeting in his life.  Perhaps that was because they used to hold most of ’em at his house.”

“And serve port and cigars, I’m told,” Mr. Plimpton put in.

“That was an inducement, Wallis, I’ll admit,” answered Phil.  “But there are even greater inducements now.”

In view of Phil Goodrich’s well-known liking for a fight, this was too pointed to admit of a reply, but Mr. Plimpton was spared the attempt by the entrance of.  Nelson Langmaid.  The lawyer, as he greeted them, seemed to be preoccupied, nor did he seek to relieve the tension with his customary joke.  A few moments of silence followed, when Eldon Parr was seen to be standing in the doorway, surveying them.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said coldly, and without more ado went to his customary chair, and sat down in it.  Immediately followed a scraping of other chairs.  There was a dominating quality about the man not to be gainsaid.

The rector called the meeting to order . . . .

During the routine business none of the little asides occurred which produce laughter.  Every man in the room was aware of the intensity of Eldon Parr’s animosity, and yet he betrayed it neither by voice, look, or gesture.  There was something uncanny in this self-control, this sang froid with which he was wont to sit at boards waiting unmoved for the time when he should draw his net about his enemies, and strangle them without pity.  It got on Langmaid’s nerves—­hardened as he was to it.  He had seen many men in that net; some had struggled, some had taken their annihilation stoically; honest merchants, freebooters, and brigands.  Most of them had gone out, with their families, into that precarious border-land of existence in which the to-morrows are ever dreaded.

Yet here, somehow, was a different case.  Langmaid found himself going back to the days when his mother had taken him to church, and he could not bear to look at, Hodder.  Since six o’clock that afternoon—­had his companions but known it—­he had passed through one of the worst periods of his existence. . . .

After the regular business had been disposed of a brief interval was allowed, for the sake of decency, to ensue.  That Eldon Parr would not lead the charge in person was a foregone conclusion.  Whom, then, would he put forward?  For obvious reasons, not Wallis Plimpton or Langmaid, nor Francis Ferguson.  Hodder found his, glance unconsciously fixed upon Everett Constable, who, moved nervously and slowly pushed back his chair.  He was called upon, in this hour and in the church his father had helped to found, to make the supreme payment for the years of financial prosperity.  Although a little man, with his shoulders thrown back and his head high, he generally looked impressive when he spoke, and his fine features and clear-cut English contributed to the effect.  But now his face was strained, and his voice seemed to lack command as he bowed and mentioned the rector’s name.  Eldon Parr sat back.