“Hold on!” cried Langmaid, now plainly agitated.  “You have no right—­you can know nothing of that affair.  You do not understand business.”

“I’m afraid,” replied the rector, sadly, “that I understand one side of it only too well.”

“The Church has no right to meddle outside of her sphere, to dictate to politics and business.”

“Her sphere,” said Holder,—­is the world.  If she does not change the world by sending out Christians into it, she would better close her doors.”

“Well, I don’t intend to quarrel with you, Holder.  I suppose it can’t be helped that we look at these things differently, and I don’t intend to enter into a defence of business.  It would take too long, and it wouldn’t help any.”  He got to his feet.  “Whatever happens, it won’t interfere with our personal friendship, even if you think me a highwayman and I think you a—­”

“A fanatic,” Holder supplied.  He had risen, too, and stood, with a smile on his face, gazing at the lawyer with an odd scrutiny.

“An idealist, I was going to say,” Langmaid answered, returning the smile, “I’ll admit that we need them in the world.  It’s only when one of them gets in the gear-box . . . .”

The rector laughed.  And thus they stood, facing each other.

“Langmaid,” Holder asked, “don’t you ever get tired and disgusted with the Juggernaut car?”

The big lawyer continued to smile, but a sheepish, almost boyish expression came over his face.  He had not credited the clergyman with so much astuteness.

“Business, nowadays, is—­business, Holder.  The Juggernaut car claims us all.  It has become-if you will permit me to continue to put my similes into slang—­the modern band wagon.  And we lawyers have to get on it, or fall by the wayside.”

Holder stared into the fire.

“I appreciate your motive in coming here,” he said, at length, “and I do you the justice of believing it was friendly, that the fact that you are, in a way, responsible for me to—­to the congregation of St. John’s did not enter into it.  I realize that I have made matters particularly awkward for you.  You have given them in me, and in good faith, something they didn’t bargain for.  You haven’t said so, but you want me to resign.  On the one hand, you don’t care to see me tilting at the windmills, or, better, drawing down on my head the thunderbolts of your gods.  On the other hand, you are just a little afraid for your gods.  If the question in dispute were merely an academic one, I’d accommodate you at once.  But I can’t.  I’ve thought it all out, and I have made up my mind that it is my clear duty to remain here and, if I am strong enough, wrest this church from the grip of Eldon Parr and the men whom he controls.