“Oh!” Hodder exclaimed.  He began, mechanically, to divest himself of his surplice.  McCrae stood by.

“I’d like to say a word, first—­if ye don’t mind—­” he began.

The rector looked at him quickly.

“I’d like just to thank ye for that sermon—­I can say no more now,” said McCrae; he turned away, and left the room abruptly.

This characteristic tribute from the inarticulate, loyal Scotchman left him tingling . . . .  He made his way to the door and saw the people in the choir room, standing silently, in groups, looking toward him.  Some one spoke to him, and he recognized Eleanor Goodrich.

“We couldn’t help coming, Mr. Hodder—­just to tell you how much we admire you.  It was wonderful, what you said.”

He grew hot with gratitude, with thankfulness that there were some who understood—­and that this woman was among them, and her husband . . .  Phil Goodrich took him by the hand.

“I can understand that kind of religion,” he said.  “And, if necessary, I can fight for it.  I have come to enlist.”

“And I can understand it, too,” added the sunburned Evelyn.  “I hope you will let me help.”

That was all they said, but Hodder understood.  Eleanor Goodrich’s eyes were dimmed as she smiled an her sister and her husband—­a smile that bespoke the purest quality of pride.  And it was then, as they made way for others, that the full value of their allegiance was borne in upon him, and he grasped the fact that the intangible barrier which had separated him from them had at last been broken down:  His look followed the square shoulders and aggressive, close-cropped head of Phil Goodrich, the firm, athletic figure of Evelyn, who had represented to him an entire class of modern young women, vigorous, athletic, with a scorn of cant in which he secretly sympathized, hitherto frankly untouched by spiritual interests of any sort.  She had, indeed, once bluntly told him that church meant nothing to her . . . .

In that little company gathered in the choir room were certain members of his congregation whom, had he taken thought, he would least have expected to see.  There were Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, an elderly couple who had attended St. John’s for thirty years; and others of the same unpretentious element of his parish who were finding in modern life an increasingly difficult and bewildering problem.  There was little Miss Tallant, an assiduous guild worker whom he had thought the most orthodox of persons; Miss Ramsay, who taught the children of the Italian mothers; Mr. Carton, the organist, a professed free-thinker, with whom Hodder had had many a futile argument; and Martha Preston, who told him that he had made her think about religion seriously for the first time in her life.

And there were others, types equally diverse.  Young men of the choir, and others whom he had never seen, who informed him shyly that they would come again, and bring their friends . . . .