beyond us. And nations and men who even yet know nothing of the Gospels
are showing a willingness to adopt what is Christ's, and the God of
Christ."

Holder was silent, from sheer inability to speak.

"If you had needed an advocate with me," the bishop continued, "you could
not have had one to whose counsel I would more willingly have listened,
than that of Horace Bentley. He wrote asking to come and see me, but I
went to him in Dalton Street the day I returned. And it gives me
satisfaction, Mr. Holder, to confess to you freely that he has taught me,
by his life, more of true Christianity than I have learned in all my
experience elsewhere."

"I had thought," exclaimed the rector, wonderingly, "that I owed him more
than any other man."

"There are many who think that--hundreds, I should say," the bishop
replied . . . . "Eldon Parr ruined him, drove him from the church....
It is strange how, outside of the church, his influence has silently and
continuously grown until it has borne fruit in--this. Even now," he
added after a pause, "the cautiousness, the dread of change which comes
with old age might, I think, lead me to be afraid of it if I--didn't
perceive behind it the spirit of Horace Bentley."

It struck Holder, suddenly, what an unconscious but real source of
confidence this thought had likewise been to him. He spoke of it.

"It is not that I wouldn't trust you," the bishop went on. "I have
watched you, I have talked to Asa Waring, I have read the newspapers.