Now, from what Harding and Chichester had said to him, and from what he had observed for himself, Malling believed that the two clergymen must have had sittings together, probably with the usual tremendous object of the ignorant amateur, that merely of communicating with the other world.  Considering who the two men were, Malling believed that in all probability they had sat alone and in secret.  He also felt little doubt that from Mr. Harding’s brain had come the suggestion of these practices, that his will had led Chichester on to them.  Although he had not known the rector two years ago, he had gathered sufficient testimony to the fact that he had been a man of powerful, even perhaps of tyrannical, temperament, formed rather to rule than to be ruled.  He knew that Chichester, on the contrary, had been gentle, kindly, yielding, and of somewhat weak, though of very amiable, nature.  The physique of the two men accorded with these former temperaments.  Harding’s commanding height, large frame, big, powerful face and head, rather hard gray eyes, even his large white teeth, his bony, determined hands, his firmly treading feet, suggested force, a dominating will, the capacity, and the intention, to rule.  Henry Chichester’s fleshly envelop, on the other hand, cherubic, fair, and delicate, his blue eyes, small bones, the shape of forehead and chin, the line of the lips, hinted at—­surely more than that, surely stated mildly—­the existence within it of a nature retiring, meek, and ready to be ruled by others.  No wonder if Chichester had been, as Lady Mansford had said, completely under the rector’s thumb, no wonder if he had been unable to “call his soul his own” and had “worshiped Marcus.”

Yes, if there had been these secret sittings by these two men, it was Harding who had persuaded Chichester to take part in them.  And what had these sittings led to, what had been their result?

The ignorant outsider, the hastily skeptical, of course would say that there could have been no result.  Malling, knowing more, knew better.  He had seen strange cases of temporary confusion of a man’s will brought about by sittings, of what had seemed temporary change even of a man’s nature.  When a hitherto sane man goes mad he often becomes the opposite of what he was.  Those whom he formerly loved he specially singles out for hatred.  That which he delighted to do he shrinks from with horror.  Once good-natured, he is now of an evil temper, once gentle, he is fiercely obstinate, once gay, he cowers and weeps.  So Malling had known a man, while retaining his sanity, to be transformed by the apparently trivial fact of sitting at a table with a friend, and placing his hands upon it with the hands of another man.  He himself had sat with an Oxford friend,—­who in later sittings became entranced,—­and at the very first experiment this man had said to him, “It’s so strange, now that I am sitting with you like this I feel filled with hatred toward you.”  This hatred, which had come upon this man at every successive sitting, had always faded away when the sitting was over.  But was it certain that the feelings generated in sittings never persisted after they were broken up?  Was it certain that in every case the waters that had been mysteriously troubled settled into their former stillness?