One morning Mr. Strathmore sat in his study talking to a visitor in clerical dress. The room was luxuriously appointed, for Mr. Strathmore's belongings were always of a sort to minister pleasantly to the sense. The walls were lined with books in sumptuous bindings, the windows hung with heavy curtains of crimson velvet, the floor covered with rich rugs. A bronze statuette of Savonarola stood on an ebony pedestal between two windows, consorting somewhat oddly with the velvet draperies which swept down on either side. Indeed, there might be thought to be something in the thin, spiritually impassioned face of the monk, in the eagerly imperative gesture with which he pointed with one hand to the open Bible he held in the other, not entirely consistent with the somewhat worldly air of the room. The handsome carved chairs, cushioned with fine leather, the beautiful landscape by Rousseau above the mantel, the bronze and silver of the writing-table, had been given to the popular pastor by enthusiastic admirers, however, and perhaps the Savonarola better expressed his own inner feelings. Mr. Strathmore's face, it is true, was in itself somewhat unspiritual. The clergyman was of commanding presence, and while neither unusually tall nor exceptionally large, he somehow gave, from the air with which he carried himself, the impression of size and importance. His eyes were keen and piercing, neither study nor the advance of years having dimmed their clear sight or reduced him to the necessity of wearing glasses. He was still handsome, although his face was too full, and he was too generously provided with chins. As he talked, his face would have seemed almost blank and expressionless had it not been for his keen eyes, full of alert intelligence and abundant vitality. His glance was acute and searching, and yet nothing could exceed its kindliness and sympathy. The visitor who sat talking with Mr. Strathmore was almost ludicrously his opposite. Mr. Pewtap was a small, ineffectual creature, with inefficiency oozing out of his every pore. He was conspicuously the incarnation of well-meaning and exasperating incompetence; one of those men who might be forgiven everything but the fact that their stupidities are invariably the result of the best intentions. It was evident at a glance that this man had used the church as a genteel pauper asylum, wherein his ineptitude might be devoted to the service of Heaven since nothing gifted with the common sense of earth would tolerate it. His very attitude was an excuse, and the way in which he handled his hat might have provoked profanity in any saint at all addicted to nerves. Mr. Pewtap was more than usually crushed in his appearance, and toed in more than was his custom, because he had come on an awkward errand, and had been telling his host that he could not vote for him in the coming election. Mr. Strathmore had received this declaration with good-humor, and even with no appearance of disapproval.