twilight, till he was heard talking
to the lodger at his open window. The colloquy seemed to end in a
quarrel. Todhunter dashed down his window with violence, and the man in
the high hat melted into the sea-fog again. This story is told by the
family with the fiercest mystification; but I really think Mrs MacNab
prefers her own original tale: that the Other Man (or whatever it is)
crawls out every night from the big box in the corner, which is kept
locked all day. You see, therefore, how this sealed door of Todhunter's
is treated as the gate of all the fancies and monstrosities of the
'Thousand and One Nights'. And yet there is the little fellow in his
respectable black jacket, as punctual and innocent as a parlour clock.
He pays his rent to the tick; he is practically a teetotaller; he is
tirelessly kind with the younger children, and can keep them amused
for a day on end; and, last and most urgent of all, he has made himself
equally popular with the eldest daughter, who is ready to go to church
with him tomorrow."

A man warmly concerned with any large theories has always a relish
for applying them to any triviality. The great specialist having
condescended to the priest's simplicity, condescended expansively. He
settled himself with comfort in his arm-chair and began to talk in the
tone of a somewhat absent-minded lecturer:

"Even in a minute instance, it is best to look first to the main
tendencies of Nature. A particular flower may not be dead in early
winter, but the flowers are dying; a particular pebble may never be
wetted with the tide, but the tide is coming in. To the scientific eye
all human history is a series of collective movements, destructions or
migrations, like the massacre of flies in winter or the return of birds
in spring. Now the root fact in all history is Race. Race produces
religion; Race produces legal and ethical wars. There is no stronger
case than that of the wild, unworldly and perishing stock which we
commonly call the Celts, of whom your friends the MacNabs are specimens.
Small, swarthy, and of this dreamy and drifting blood, they accept
easily the superstitious explanation of any incidents, just as they
still accept (you will excuse me for saying) that superstitious
explanation of all incidents which you and your Church represent. It is
not remarkable that such people, with the sea moaning behind them
and the Church (excuse me again) droning in front of them, should put
fantastic feat