only, but well mentally, and, what is better yet, in so far as I can see
the truth, spiritually. I was healed after six months' treatment by a
Christian Science practitioner in Chicago, who took my case on my
appealing to her, and I stand before you absolutely sound and whole. God
is good."

He sat down.

While he had been talking Eugene had been studying him closely,
observing every line of his features. He was tall, lean, sandy-haired
and sandy-bearded. He was not bad-looking, with long straight nose,
clear blue eyes, a light pinkish color to his complexion, and a sense of
vigor and health about him. The thing that Eugene noted most was that he
was calm, cool, serene, vital. He said exactly what he wanted to say,
and he said it vigorously. His voice was clear and with good carrying
power. His clothes were shapely, new, well made. He was no beggar or
tramp, but a man of some profession--an engineer, very likely. Eugene
wished that he might talk to him, and yet he felt ashamed. Somehow this
man's case paralleled his own; not exactly, but closely. He personally
was never diseased, but how often he had looked after a perfectly
charming woman to lust after her! Was the thing that this man was saying
really true? Could he be lying? How ridiculous! Could he be mistaken?
_This man?_ Impossible! He was too strong, too keen, too sincere, too
earnest, to be either of these things. Still--But this testimony might
have been given for his benefit, some strange helpful power--that kindly
fate that had always pursued him might be trying to reach him here.
Could it be? He felt a little strange about it, as he had when he saw
the black-bearded man entering the train that took him to Three Rivers,
the time he went at the call of Suzanne, as he did when horseshoes were
laid before him by supernatural forces to warn him of coming prosperity.
He went home thinking, and that night he seriously tried to read
"Science and Health" for the first time.

CHAPTER XXV

Those who have ever tried to read that very peculiar and, to many, very
significant document know what an apparent jumble of contradictions and
metaphysical balderdash it appears to be. The statement concerning the
rapid multiplication and increased violence of diseases since the flood,
which appears in the introduction is enough to shock any believer in
definite, material, established natural science, and when Eugene came
upon this in the outset, it irritated him, of cou