Presently they stood, face to face, across a table reduced to its smallest proportions, in the tempered light of a vast dining-room, an apartment that seemed to symbolize the fortress-like properties of wealth.  The odd thought struck the clergyman that this man had made his own Tower of London, had built with his own hands the prison in which he was to end his days.  The carved oaken ceiling, lofty though it was, had the effect of pressing downward, the heavy furniture matched the heavy walls, and even the silent, quick-moving servants had a watchful air.

Mr. Parr bowed his head while Hodder asked grace.  They sat down.

The constraint which had characterized their conversation continued, yet there was a subtle change in the attitude of the clergyman.  The financier felt this, though it could not be said that Hodder appeared more at his ease:  his previous silences had been by no means awkward.  Eldon Parr liked self-contained men.  But his perceptions were as keen as Nelson Langmaid’s, and like Langmaid, he had gradually become conscious of a certain baffling personality in the new rector of St. John’s.  From time to time he was aware of the grey-green eyes curiously fixed on him, and at a loss to account for their expression.  He had no thought of reading in it an element of pity.  Yet pity was nevertheless in the rector’s heart, and its advent was emancipating him from the limitations of provincial inexperience.

Suddenly, the financier launched forth on a series of shrewd and searching questions about Bremerton, its church, its people, its industries, and social conditions.  All of which Hodder answered to his apparent satisfaction.

Coffee was brought.  Hodder pushed back his chair, crossed his knees, and sat perfectly still regarding his host, his body suggesting a repose that did not interfere with his perceptive faculties.

“You don’t smoke, Mr. Hodder?”

The rector smiled and shook his head.  Mr. Parr selected a diminutive, yellow cigar and held it up.

“This,” he said, “has been the extent of my indulgence for twenty years.  They are made for me in Cuba.”

Hodder smiled again, but said nothing.

“I have had a letter from your former bishop, speaking of you in the highest terms,” he observed.

“The bishop is very kind.”

Mr. Parr cleared his throat.

“I am considerably older than you,” he went on, “and I have the future of St. John’s very much at heart, Mr. Hodder.  I trust you will remember this and make allowances for it as I talk to you.

“I need not remind you that you have a grave responsibility on your shoulders for so young a man, and that St. John’s is the oldest parish in the diocese.”

“I think I realize it, Mr. Parr,” said Hodder, gravely.  “It was only the opportunity of a larger work here that induced me to leave Bremerton.”

“Exactly,” agreed the banker.  “The parish, I believe, is in good running order—­I do not think you will see the necessity for many—­ahem—­changes.  But we sadly needed an executive head.  And, if I may say so, Mr. Hodder, you strike me as a man of that type, who might have made a success in a business career.”