The rector called the meeting to order . . . .

During the routine business none of the little asides occurred which produce laughter.  Every man in the room was aware of the intensity of Eldon Parr’s animosity, and yet he betrayed it neither by voice, look, or gesture.  There was something uncanny in this self-control, this sang froid with which he was wont to sit at boards waiting unmoved for the time when he should draw his net about his enemies, and strangle them without pity.  It got on Langmaid’s nerves—­hardened as he was to it.  He had seen many men in that net; some had struggled, some had taken their annihilation stoically; honest merchants, freebooters, and brigands.  Most of them had gone out, with their families, into that precarious border-land of existence in which the to-morrows are ever dreaded.

Yet here, somehow, was a different case.  Langmaid found himself going back to the days when his mother had taken him to church, and he could not bear to look at, Hodder.  Since six o’clock that afternoon—­had his companions but known it—­he had passed through one of the worst periods of his existence. . . .

After the regular business had been disposed of a brief interval was allowed, for the sake of decency, to ensue.  That Eldon Parr would not lead the charge in person was a foregone conclusion.  Whom, then, would he put forward?  For obvious reasons, not Wallis Plimpton or Langmaid, nor Francis Ferguson.  Hodder found his, glance unconsciously fixed upon Everett Constable, who, moved nervously and slowly pushed back his chair.  He was called upon, in this hour and in the church his father had helped to found, to make the supreme payment for the years of financial prosperity.  Although a little man, with his shoulders thrown back and his head high, he generally looked impressive when he spoke, and his fine features and clear-cut English contributed to the effect.  But now his face was strained, and his voice seemed to lack command as he bowed and mentioned the rector’s name.  Eldon Parr sat back.

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Constable began, “I feel it my duty to say something this evening, something that distresses me.  Like some of you who are here present, I have been on this vestry for many years, and my father was on it before me.  I was brought up under Dr. Gilman, of whom I need not speak.  All here, except our present rector, knew him.  This church, St. John’s, has been a part—­a—­large part—­of my life.  And anything that seems to touch its welfare, touches me.

“When Dr. Gilman died, after so many years of faithful service, we faced a grave problem,—­that of obtaining a young man of ability, an active man who would be able to assume the responsibilities of a large and growing parish, and at the same time carry on its traditions, precious to us all; one who believed in and preached, I need scarcely add, the accepted doctrines of the Church, which we have been taught to think are sacred and necessary to salvation.  And in the discovery of the Reverend Mr. Hodder, we had reason to congratulate ourselves and the parish.  He was all that we had hoped for, and more.  His sermons were at once a pleasure and an instruction.