"Sit down," he said hospitably; "and then fill up your pipe. Duncan doesn't smoke, worse luck; and I find I miss the old aroma. It's rather like incense offered to the ghost of my old self." His accent was trivial, and Brenton, listening to the apparently careless words, could form no notion of the pains that had gone into their choosing. "Your new self, I should say. It's astounding, Opdyke, the way you've picked yourself out of the rut and gone rushing ahead again." "With a difference, though," Reed told him bluntly. "Is the jar full? You like the kind?" "Yes, thanks." And Brenton filled his pipe. After a minute's puffing, "After all, Opdyke, you have pretty well minimized the difference," he observed. "Thanks to Ramsdell and Duncan, yes. They have been wonderful props, and it's good to get on my professional legs again, whatever my bodily ones may do for me. Meanwhile, how are things going with you?" Brenton smoked in silence for a minute. Then,-- "The wraith of my departed priestly calling forbids me to phrase my answer just as I'd like best to do," he said. Reed nodded. "So bad as that? What is the matter now?" "It's hard to specify. I seem to have run myself aground." "Pull off, then," Reed advised. "No craft in sight to tow me." Reed shut his teeth. "Brenton, that has been your trouble from the start. You've always been drifting, anchor up, ready for a tow. Now hoist your sails and, for the Lord's sake, go ahead." "Where?" "Where! Wherever the chart takes you. What chart? The chart of plain duty, man, the duty of an honest citizen to make the most of himself and be a little good to humanity at large. No; wait. You've had your chances; you can't cry off on that. You had your chance, 'way back in college, and you chucked it over. How much more would it have hurt your mother to have seen you once for all take up a secular profession, than it would to have watched you setting out to preach all the things her own religion didn't stand for? You had another chance in Saint Peter's. It wasn't a small chance, either. You could have held that church together, solid; you could have brought its people to a working assent to a practical exposition of their creed that would have kept them busy and loyal to their Creator, in doing their duty to their co-created fellow men. Instead, you ignored your chance to keep them busy on things that would help on the world we live in, and spent all your energies in tangling up your notions of the world we came out of, and the world we, some day, are going into. As mental gymnastics, it was very pretty to watch; as a useful employment for a man who calls himself a pastor of souls, it wasn't worth a rush." "But a man can't help his thoughts," Brenton expostulated suddenly.