s astonished beyond measure at the thing that had occurred.
The subsequent conversation threw absolutely no light on the matter so
far as Fotheringay was concerned; the general opinion not only followed
Mr. Cox very closely but very vehemently. Everyone accused Fotheringay
of a silly trick, and presented him to himself as a foolish destroyer of
comfort and security. His mind was in a tornado of perplexity, he was
himself inclined to agree with them, and he made a remarkably
ineffectual opposition to the proposal of his departure.

He went home flushed and heated, coat-collar crumpled, eyes smarting
and ears red. He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he
passed it. It was only when he found himself alone in his little
bed-room in Church Row that he was able to grapple seriously with his
memories of the occurrence, and ask, "What on earth happened?"

He had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting on the bed with his
hands in his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the
seventeenth time, "_I_ didn't want the confounded thing to upset," when
it occurred to him that at the precise moment he had said the commanding
words he had inadvertently willed the thing he said, and that when he
had seen the lamp in the air he had felt that it depended on him to
maintain it there without being clear how this was to be done. He had
not a particularly complex mind, or he might have stuck for a time at
that "inadvertently willed," embracing, as it does, the abstrusest
problems of voluntary action; but as it was, the idea came to him with a
quite acceptable haziness. And from that, following, as I must admit, no
clear logical path, he came to the test of experiment.

He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind, though he
felt he did a foolish thing. "Be raised up," he said. But in a second
that feeling vanished. The candle was raised, hung in the air one giddy
moment, and as Mr. Fotheringay gasped, fell with a smash on his
toilet-table, leaving him in darkness save for the expiring glow of its
wick.

For a time Mr. Fotheringay sat in the darkness, perfectly still. "It did
happen, after all," he said. "And 'ow _I'm_ to explain it I _don't_
know." He sighed heavily, and began feeling in his pockets for a match.
He could find none, and he rose and groped about the toilet-table. "I
wish I had a match," he said. He resorted to his coat, and there was
none there, and then it dawned upon him that miracle