“Ah, very true, very true,” sighed Mrs. Widesworth; “only I forget what that last word means.”

“Extispicy,” defined the Professor, “is properly the observation of entrails and divination thereby.”

“Yet more is to be learned from bones,” said Dr. Dastick, decidedly.  “I hold that the performances of Cuvier alone are conclusive upon that point.”

Colonel Prowley looked doubtful:  it would hardly do to question thus lightly the wisdom of Antiquity.

Here Professor Owlsdarck experienced a queer twitching about the corners of his mouth,—­an affection which since his poetical address before the Wrexford Trustees had occasionally troubled him.

“At any rate, Colonel,” he observed, “we can agree, that, whatever amount of wisdom the Ancients may have shown in observing the digestive apparatus of animals, it certainly exceeded that of our modern philosophers, who are always contemplating their own.”

“Truly, I believe you are right,” responded Colonel Prowley.  “There is my dear friend Miss Hurribattle, who is always coming to me with some new cure for people who are perfectly well.  At one time Mrs. Romulus told her that everybody should live on fruits which ripen at least six feet above-ground,—­all roots having an earthy and degrading tendency.  The last recipe for the salvation of society is, to take a little gravel with our meals, like birds.”

Dr. Dastick partly closed his eyes, and said, with some effort,—­

“I think that men are befooled with these new explanations of sin and its bitter fruits because the pulpit has done talking of the abiding sinfulness of our inherited nature.  When I was a boy, the minister offered us the good old remedies of Baptismal Regeneration or Prevenient Grace, instead of bidding us drench our flesh with water or crack our bones with gymnastics.”

At that moment Mr. Clifton turned towards me a half-startled, half-triumphant look.  I felt that the idea had been working in his mind, but that he had used another’s lips for its utterance.  Under undetermined conditions certain minds are capable of employing a physical organization alien to themselves.  If I had doubted this before, a foreign influence in my own person would have made it clear at that moment.  For I felt a reply uttered from my lips which came not from my consciousness.

“The moral, perhaps, is, that the pendulum has reached the other extremity of the arc of oscillation, and that neither spiritual nor physical regeneration can walk in the fetters of a system.”

Some one called out that the procession was passing.  All crowded to the windows.