if he takes a ticket every time it will cost him a lot of
money. I done the best I could for him, but of course it's difficult for
him to put himself in my place. I thought afterwards that his clothes
might have got scorched, you know--if Hades is all it's supposed to
be--before I shifted him. In that case I suppose they'd have locked him
up in San Francisco. Of course I willed him a new suit of clothes on him
directly I thought of it. But, you see, I'm already in a deuce of a
tangle----"

Mr. Maydig looked serious. "I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it's a
difficult position. How you are to end it ..." He became diffuse and
inconclusive.

"However, we'll leave Winch for a little and discuss the larger
question. I don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of
the sort. I don't think there is any taint of criminality about it at
all, Mr. Fotheringay--none whatever, unless you are suppressing material
facts. No, it's miracles--pure miracles--miracles, if I may say so, of
the very highest class."

He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while Mr. Fotheringay
sat with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried.
"I don't see how I'm to manage about Winch," he said.

"A gift of working miracles--apparently a very powerful gift," said Mr.
Maydig, "will find a way about Winch--never fear. My dear Sir, you are a
most important man--a man of the most astonishing possibilities. As
evidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do...."

"Yes, _I've_ thought of a thing or two," said Mr. Fotheringay.
"But--some of the things came a bit twisty. You saw that fish at first?
Wrong sort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask
someone."

"A proper course," said Mr. Maydig, "a very proper course--altogether
the proper course." He stopped and looked at Mr. Fotheringay. "It's
practically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. If
they really _are_ ... If they really are all they seem to be."

And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house
behind the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10,
1896, Mr. Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to
work miracles. The reader's attention is specially and definitely called
to the date. He will object, probably has already objected, that certain
points in this story are improbable, that if any things of the sort
already described had indeed occurred, they wou