“Did she speak her prayers where you could hear her, Daisy?”

“I used to hear her—­”

“Mornings and evenings?”

“Yes.”

“But you heard her in broad day, Preston?”

“Yes; one afternoon it was.  I heard her as soon as I got near the house.  Daisy was asleep, and I went away as wise as I came.”

“This grows interesting,” said Gary returning to Daisy.  “Could you hear the words that were said?”

“No.”

“Only a muttering?”

Daisy was silent.  The tears came into her eyes.

“Depend upon it, Daisy, it was incantations you heard.  Description agrees exactly.  Confess now, didn’t a sort of feeling grow over you—­creep over you—­whenever you heard that muttering sound, as if you would do anything that black woman told you?”

Daisy was silent.

“Don’t you know it is not proper to pray so that people can hear you? ’tisn’t the way to do.  Witches pray that way—­not good Christian people.  I regard it as a very fortunate thing, Daisy, that we have got you safe out of her hands.  Don’t you think that prayer ought to be private?”

“Yes,” said Daisy.  She was overwhelmed with the rapidity and liveliness of Gary’s utterances, which he rattled forth as lightly as if they had been the multiplication table.

“Yes, just so.  It is not even a matter to be talked about—­too sacred—­so I am offending even against my own laws; but I wanted to know how far the old witch had got hold of you.  Didn’t you feel when you heard her mutterings, as if some sort of a spell was creeping over you?”

Daisy wished some sort of a spell could come over him; but she did not know what to say.

“Didn’t you gradually grow into the belief that she was a sort of saint, Daisy?”

“What is a saint, Mr. McFarlane?”

Gary at that wheeled partly round, and stroked his chin and moustache with the most comical expression of doubt and confusion.

“I declare I don’t know, Daisy!  I think it means a person who is too good for this world, and therefore isn’t allowed to live here.  They all go off in flames of some sort—­may look like glory, but is very uncomfortable—­and there is a peculiar odour about them.  Doctor, what is that odour called?”

Gary spoke with absurd soberness, but the doctor gave him no attention.

“The odour of sanctity!—­that is it!” said Gary.  “I had forgot.  I don’t know what it is like, myself; but it must be very disagreeable to have such a peculiarity attached to one.”

“How can anybody be too good for this world?” Daisy ventured.

“Too good to live in it!  You can’t live among people unless you live like them—­so the saints all leave the rest of the world in some way or other; the children die, and the grown ones go missionaries or become nuns—­they are a sort of human meteor—­shine and disappear, but don’t really accomplish much, because no one wants to be meteors.  So your old woman can’t be a saint, Daisy, or she would have quitted the world long ago.”