easy, and one of them went so far as to suggest that his health might
suffer from this abrupt transition.

"Have faith," replied Schlatter. "The Father who has permitted me to
live without nourishment for forty days, will not cease to watch over
His Son."

The town of Denver formed a little world apart. Miracles were in the
air, faith was the only subject of conversation, and everyone dreamed
of celestial joys and the grace of salvation. In this supernatural
atmosphere distinctions between the possible and the impossible were
lost sight of, and the inhabitants believed that the usual order of
nature had been overthrown.

For instance, James Eckman of Leadville, who had been blinded by an
explosion, recovered his sight immediately he arrived at Denver.
General Test declared that he had seen a legless cripple _walk_ when
the saint's gaze was bent upon him. A blind engineer named Stainthorp
became able to see daylight. A man named Dillon, bent and crippled by
an illness several decades before, recovered instantaneously. When the
saint touched him, he felt a warmth throughout his whole body; his
fingers, which he had not been able to use for years, suddenly
straightened themselves; he was conscious of a sensation of
inexpressible rapture, and rose up full of faith and joy. A man named
Welsh, of Colorado Springs, had a paralysed right hand which was
immediately cured when Schlatter touched it.

All New Mexico rejoiced in the heavenly blessing that had fallen upon
Denver. Special trains disgorged thousands of travellers, who were
caught up in the wave of religious enthusiasm directly they arrived.
The whole town was flooded with a sort of exaltation, and there was a
recrudescence of childishly superstitious beliefs, which broke out with
all the spontaneity and vigour that usually characterises the
manifestation of popular religious phenomena.

What would have been the end of it if Schlatter had not so decisively
and inexplicably disappeared?

It would be difficult to conceive of anything more extraordinary than
the exploits of this modern saint, which came near to revolutionising
the whole religious life of the New World. The fact that they took
place against a modern background, with the aid of newspaper interviews
and special trains, gives them a peculiar _cachet_. Indeed, the
spectacle of such child-like faith, allied to all the excesses of
civilisation, and backed up by the ground-work of prejudices f