was that he didn't intend to preach socialism. This was reassuring.

"Reassuring!" exclaimed Mr. Plimpton, whose customary noonday hunger was
lacking, "I wish you could have heard him say it!"

"The wicked," remarked the lawyer, "flee when no man pursueth. Don't
shoot the pianist!" Langmaid set down his beer, and threw back his head
and laughed. "If I were the Reverend Mr. Hodder, after such an
exhibition as you gave, I should immediately have suspected the pianist
of something, and I should have gone off by myself and racked my brains
and tried to discover what it was. He's a clever man, and if he hasn't
got a list of Dalton Street property now he'll have one by to-morrow,
and the story of some of your transactions with Tom Beatty and the City
Council."

"I believe you'd joke in the electric chair," said Mr. a Plimpton,
resentfully. "I'll tell you this,--and my experience backs me up,
--if you can't get next to a man by a little plain talk, he isn't safe.
I haven't got the market sense for nothing, and I'll give you this tip,
Nelson,--it's time to stand from under. Didn't I warn you fellows that
Bedloe Hubbell meant business long before he started in? and this parson
can give Hubbell cards and spades. Hodder can't see this thing as it is.
He's been thinking, this summer. And a man of that kind is downright
dangerous when he begins to think. He's found out things, and he's put
two and two together, and he's the uncompromising type. He has a notion
that the Gospel can be taken literally, and I could feel all the time I
was talking to him he thought I was a crook."

"Perhaps he was right," observed the lawyer.