Everett Constable was silent.

“Good evening, Mr. Hodder,” he said.  He did not offer to shake hands, as Mr. Plimpton had done, but sat down at the far end of the table.  He looked tired and worn; sick, the rector thought, and felt a sudden swelling of compassion for the pompous little man whose fibre was not as tough as that of these other condottieri:  as Francis Ferguson’s, for instance, although his soft hand and pink and white face framed in the black whiskers would seem to belie any fibre whatever.

Gordon Atterbury hemmed and hawed,—­“Ah, Mr. Hodder,” and seated himself beside Mr. Constable, in a chair designed to accommodate a portly bishop.  Both of them started nervously as Asa Waring, holding his head high, as a man should who has kept his birthright, went directly to the rector.

“I’m glad to see you, Mr. Hodder,” he said, and turning defiantly, surveyed the room.  There was an awkward silence.  Mr. Plimpton edged a little nearer.  The decree might have gone forth for Mr. Hodder’s destruction, but Asa Waring was a man whose displeasure was not to be lightly incurred.

“What’s this I hear about your moving out of Hamilton Place, Mr. Waring?  You’d better come up and take the Spaulding lot, in Waverley, across from us.”

“I am an old man, Mr. Plimpton,” Asa Waring replied.  “I do not move as easily as some other people in these days.”

Everett Constable produced his handkerchief and rubbed his nose violently.  But Mr. Plimpton was apparently undaunted.

“I have always said,” he observed, “that there was something very fine in your sticking to that neighbourhood after your friends had gone.  Here’s Phil!”

Phil Goodrich looked positively belligerent, and as he took his stand on the other side of Hodder his father-in-law smiled at him grimly.  Mr. Goodrich took hold of the rector’s arm.

“I missed one or two meetings last spring, Mr. Hodder,” he said, “but I’m going to be on hand after this.  My father, I believe, never missed a vestry meeting in his life.  Perhaps that was because they used to hold most of ’em at his house.”

“And serve port and cigars, I’m told,” Mr. Plimpton put in.

“That was an inducement, Wallis, I’ll admit,” answered Phil.  “But there are even greater inducements now.”

In view of Phil Goodrich’s well-known liking for a fight, this was too pointed to admit of a reply, but Mr. Plimpton was spared the attempt by the entrance of.  Nelson Langmaid.  The lawyer, as he greeted them, seemed to be preoccupied, nor did he seek to relieve the tension with his customary joke.  A few moments of silence followed, when Eldon Parr was seen to be standing in the doorway, surveying them.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said coldly, and without more ado went to his customary chair, and sat down in it.  Immediately followed a scraping of other chairs.  There was a dominating quality about the man not to be gainsaid.