nding it?"

"On the contrary, it would have added fifty dollars to the price of this
copy if the original page had been complete, or if it could have been
mended without a possibility of detection--say by a process of
faith-cure."

Philip said this laughing, as he set a chair for Phillida, and then sat
down himself.

"I beg pardon, Phillida. I oughtn't to jest about what you--feel--to be
sacred."

Phillida colored, and compressed her lips a little. Then she said:

"I don't think I ought to refuse to hear anything you have to say about
faith-cure, Philip. You evidently differ with me. But I want to know the
truth; and I--" here Phillida made a long pause, smoothing out the folds
of her gown the meanwhile. "I will tell you, Cousin Phil, that I am not
always so confident as I used to be about the matter."

Mrs. Gouverneur looked into the room at this moment, but perceiving
that the conversation had taken on a half-confidential tone, she only
said:

"I'll have to leave you with Philip a little longer, Phillida. I have
some things to see to," and went out again.

Philip went to a drawer of rare old prints, and turned them over rapidly
until he came to one of Charles II. touching for the king's evil.

"There," he said; "Charles was a liar, a traitor who took money to
betray the interests of his country, and a rake of the worst. You
wouldn't believe that he could cure sickness by any virtue in his royal
touch. Yet great doctors and clergymen of the highest ranks certify
incredible things regarding the marvelous cures wrought by him. If one
might believe their solemn assertions, more cures were wrought by him
than by any other person known to history. The only virtue that Charles
possessed was lodged in his finger-tips."

"How do you account for it?"

"The evidence of a cure is the obscurest thing in the world. People get
well by sheer force of nature in most cases. Every patent medicine and
every quack system is therefore able to count up its cures. Then, too,
many diseases are mere results of mental disturbance or depression. The
mind has enormous influence on the body. I know a doctor who cured a
woman that had not walked for years by setting fire to the bedding where
she lay and leaving her a choice to exert herself or be burned."

"But there are the cures by faith related in the Bible. I am afraid
that if I give up modern cures I must lose my faith in miracles," said
Phillida. An unusual tenderness in Philip