Some of them, who did not attempt peremptorily to choke the a processes made the startling discovery that they were not, after all, so shocked by his doctrines as they had at first supposed.  The trouble was that they could not continue to listen to him, as formerly, with comfort....  One thing was certain, that they had never expected to look forward to a vestry meeting with such breathless interest and anxiety.  This clergyman had suddenly accomplished the surprising feat of reviving the Church as a burning, vital factor in the life of the community!  He had discerned her enemy, and defied his power . . . .

As for Hodder, so absorbed had he been by his experiences, so wrung by the human contacts, the personal problems which he had sought to enter, that he had actually given no thought to the battle before him until the autumn afternoon, heavy with smoke, had settled down into darkness.  The weather was damp and cold, and he sat musing on the ordeal now abruptly confronting him before his study fire when he heard a step behind him.  He turned to recognize, by the glow of the embers, the heavy figure of Nelson Langmaid.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Hodder,” he said.  “The janitor said you were in, and your door is open.”

“Not at all,” replied the rector, rising.  As he stood for a moment facing the lawyer, the thought of their friendship, and how it had begun in the little rectory overlooking the lake at Bremerton, was uppermost in his mind,—­yes, and the memory of many friendly, literary discussions in the same room where they now stood, of pleasant dinners at Langmaid’s house in the West End, when the two of them had often sat talking until late into the nights.

“I must seem very inhospitable,” said Hodder.  “I’ll light the lamp—­it’s pleasanter than the electric light.”

The added illumination at first revealed the lawyer in his familiar aspect, the broad shoulders, the big, reddish beard, the dome-like head, —­the generous person that seemed to radiate scholarly benignity, peace, and good-will.  But almost instantly the rector became aware of a new and troubled, puzzled glance from behind the round spectacles. . .”

“I thought I’d drop in a moment on my way up town—­” he began.  And the note of uncertainty in his voice, too, was new.  Hodder drew towards the fire the big chair in which it had been Langmaid’s wont to sit, and perhaps it was the sight of this operation that loosed the lawyer’s tongue.

“Confound it, Hodder!” he exclaimed, “I like you—­I always have liked you.  And you’ve got a hundred times the ability of the average clergyman.  Why in the world did you have to go and make all this trouble?”