The room, embrowned, closed against the Christmas sun, dusky with many books, held the two men, who faced each other as once in a lifetime men may. The Bishop completed his own sentence, “You will be--my successor!” It was quite silent now, for the bells had ceased and the chat of church-goers. The chancel of St. John’s was only a stone’s throw from the chair where the Bishop sat, yet it was far from him, the chancel with its peace. But he could still get to church, although late, in time for the communion. One more Christmas sacrament was before him, if only he could hold his brain clear and his body taut, through one short hour more, against the sudden blurring pain in his head. The silence of the study still quivered with the Bishop’s last words, “My successor!” Newbold sat facing the fact never before so clearly stated by anyone, not even by himself, but clear to him now as the goal of his clumsy, forceful youth, of his anxious, successful ministry, a goal almost near enough now to touch, perhaps. He could not take his eyes from the Bishop’s face, transparent as porcelain, now turned into a mask, impenetrable. “I would not be your choice, Bishop?” The straight line of the Bishop’s lips formed a quiet, “No!” “And likely enough, I may be nobody else’s choice either--in spite of--services rendered!” Then querulous before that intent, gray face that gave no sign, “It’s small odds what happens, with this head of mine! Yet I have served and would gladly serve--” “God?” the Bishop lifted level eyes. Newbold’s thick lips formed for a quick reply, worked oddly, then were oddly dumb a moment before they twisted into a cynic curve from the large teeth. “Harry spoke to me with some frankness this morning. He had just left me when you came, Bishop, a different visitor, it seemed to me. A curious Christmas, verily, if you, too, like all the rest, think strange things of me!” “Strange things! Are they not true?” A rush of anger had swept the color to the Bishop’s cheeks and shot lightnings to his eyes. The years had fallen from his face like a veil snatched aside. Yet with a torrent of words upon his tongue, the Bishop, looking at Newbold, turned silent. There are some men to whom the sight of one who cringes before a blow deserved is humiliating to their own inmost manhood. The sight of Newbold seated there, from his bowed, brute head, with its too-blue, watching eyes, to his big foot that never ceased to tap the rug raspingly, had caused the Bishop a recoil for which he hated himself. Yet his anger was just, just! The Christ Himself had cried out against the hypocrite, against commercialism in spiritual places. The Bishop, of fine frail fiber as he was himself, remembered the charm for him of the youthful Newbold’s provincial crudity and heartiness,--but now, the Bishop thought bitterly, if one wished to make a minister of the gospel, one had better take a gentleman to start with!