The worst of these trials, perhaps, was a conspicuous article in a newspaper containing a garbled account of his sermon and of the sensation it had produced amongst his fashionable parishioners.  He had refused to see the reporter, but he had been made out a hero, a socialistic champion of the poor.  The black headlines were nauseating; and beside them, in juxtaposition, were pen portraits of himself and of Eldon Parr.  There were rumours that the banker had left the church until the recalcitrant rector should be driven out of it; the usual long list of Mr. Parr’s benefactions was included, and certain veiled paragraphs concerning his financial operations.  Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Plimpton, Mr. Constable, did not escape,—­although they, too, had refused to be interviewed . . . .

The article brought to the parish house a bevy of reporters who had to be fought off, and another batch of letters, many of them from ministers, in approval or condemnation.

His fellow-clergymen called, some to express sympathy and encouragement, more of them to voice in person indignant and horrified protests.  Dr. Annesley of Calvary—­a counterpart of whose rubicund face might have been found in the Council of Trent or in mediaeval fish-markets —­pronounced his anathemas with his hands folded comfortably over his stomach, but eventually threw to the winds every vestige of his ecclesiastical dignity . . . .

Then there came a note from the old bishop, who was traveling.  A kindly note, withal, if non-committal,—­to the effect that he had received certain communications, but that his physician would not permit him to return for another ten days or so.  He would then be glad to see Mr. Holder and talk with him.

What would the bishop do?  Holder’s relations with him had been more than friendly, but whether the bishop’s views were sufficiently liberal to support him in the extreme stand he had taken he could not surmise.  For it meant that the bishop, too, must enter into a conflict with the first layman of his diocese, of whose hospitality he had so often partaken, whose contributions had been on so lordly a scale.  The bishop was in his seventieth year, and had hitherto successfully fought any attempt to supply him with an assistant,—­coadjutor or suffragan.

At such times the fear grew upon Hodder that he might be recommended for trial, forced to abandon his fight to free the Church from the fetters that bound her:  that the implacable hostility of his enemies would rob him of his opportunity.

Thus ties were broken, many hard things were said and brought to his ears.  There were vacancies in the classes and guilds, absences that pained him, silences that wrung him. . . .

Of all the conversations he held, that with Mrs. Constable was perhaps the most illuminating and distressing.  As on that other occasion, when he had gone to her, this visit was under the seal of confession, unknown to her husband.  And Hodder had been taken aback, on seeing her enter his office, by the very tragedy in her face—­the tragedy he had momentarily beheld once before.  He drew up a chair for her, and when she had sat down she gazed at him some moments without speaking.