frankness, "to see how deep ye were getting in with him."

Hodder did not reply to this. He had himself risen, and stood looking at
McCrae, filled with a new thought.

"There is one thing I should like to say to you--which is very difficult,
McCrae, but I have no doubt you see the matter as clearly as I do. In
making this fight, I have no one but myself to consider. I am a single
man--"

"Yell not need to go on," answered McCrae, with an odd mixture of
sternness and gentleness in his voice. "I'll stand and fall with ye, Mr.
Hodder. Before I ever thought of the Church I learned a trade, as a boy
in Scotland. I'm not a bad carpenter. And if worse comes to worse, I've
an idea I can make as much with my hands as I make in the ministry."

The smile they exchanged across the table sealed the compact between
them.



II

The electric car which carried him to his appointment with the financier
shot westward like a meteor through the night. And now that the hour was
actually at hand, it seemed to Hodder that he was absurdly unprepared to
meet it. New and formidable aspects, hitherto unthought of, rose in his
mind, and the figure of Eldon Parr loomed to Brobdingnagian proportions
as he approached it. In spite of his determination, the life-blood of
his confidence ebbed, a sense of the power and might of the man who had