"He has not only made me wonder," declared Bedloe Hubbell, emphatically,
"I never knew what religion was until I heard this man last Sunday."

"Last Sunday!"

"Until then, I hadn't been inside of a church for fifteen years,--except
to get married. My wife takes the children, occasionally, to a
Presbyterian church near us."

"And why, did you go then?" she asked.

"I am a little ashamed of my motive," he confessed. "There were rumours
--I don't pretend to know how they got about--" he hesitated, once more
aware of delicate ground. "Wallis Plimpton said something to a man who
told me. I believe I went out of sheer curiosity to hear what Hodder
would have to say. And then, I had been reading, wondering whether there
were anything in Christianity, after all."

"Yes?" she said, careless now as to what cause he might attribute her
eagerness. "And he gave you something?"

It was then she grasped the truth that this sudden renewed intimacy was
the result of the impression Hodder had left upon the minds of both.

"He gave me everything," Bedloe Hubbell replied. "I am willing to
acknowledge it freely. In his explanation of the parable of the Prodigal
Son, he gave me the clew to our modern times. What was for me an
inextricable puzzle has become clear as day. He has made me understand,
at last, the force which stirred me, which goaded me until I was fairly