“But—?” said the rector.  He stared at the other’s face, and the question died on his lips.

“You wonder why I am no longer a parishioner.  The time came when I could not afford to be.”  There was no hint of reproach in his voice, of bitterness.  He spoke regretfully, indeed, but as one stating an incontrovertible fact.  “I lost my fortune, I could not keep my pew, so I deeded it back to the church.  My old friends, Mrs. Dimock and Asa Waring, and others, too, were very kind.  But I could not accept their hospitality.”

Hodder bowed his head in silence.  What thundered indictment of the Church of Christ could have been as severe, as wholly condemning as these few words so dispassionately uttered by the man beside him?

The old darky entered, and announced supper.

Hodder had lost his way, yet a hand had been held out to him, and he seized it.  With a sense of being led, psychically as well as physically, he followed Mr. Bentley into a large bedroom, where a high, four-posted bed lifted a pleated canopy toward the ceiling.  And after he had washed his hands they entered a dining-room looking out upon a little yard in the rear, which had been transformed into a garden.  Roses, morning glories, and nasturtiums were growing against the walls; a hose lay coiled upon the path; the bricks, baked during the day, were splashed with water; the leaves and petals were wet, and the acrid odour of moist earth, mingling with perfumes, penetrated the room.  Hodder paused in the window.

“Sam keeps our flowers alive,” he heard Mr. Bentley say, “I don’t know how.”

“I scrubs ’em, sah,” said Sam.  “Yassah, I washes ’em like chilluns.”

He found himself, at Mr. Bentley’s request, asking grace, the old darky with reverently bent head standing behind his master; sitting down at a mahogany table that reflected like a mirror the few pieces of old silver, to a supper of beaten biscuits that burned one’s fingers, of ’broiled chicken and coffee, and sliced peaches and cream.  Mr. Bentley was talking of other days—­not so long gone by when the great city had been a village, or scarcely more.  The furniture, it seemed, had come from his own house in what was called the Wilderness Road, not far from the river banks, over the site of which limited trains now rolled on their way eastward toward the northernmost of the city’s bridges.  He mentioned many names, some remembered, some forgotten, like his own; dwelt on pleasures and customs gone by forever.

“A little while after I moved in here, I found that one old man could not fill the whole of this house, so I let the upper floors,” he explained, smilingly.  “Some day I must introduce you to my tenants, Mr. Hodder.”