He looked across at Ashe with a sort of challenge, but though the sea wind ruffled the old lawyer’s red mane, his Napoleonic mask was unruffled; it even had a sort of beauty from its new benignity.

“I am too happy just now in thinking how wrong I have been,” he answered, “to quarrel with you, doctor, about our theories.  And yet, in justice to the Squire as well as myself, I should demur to your sweeping inference.  I respect these peasants, I respect your regard for them; but their stories are a different matter.  I think I would do anything for them but believe them.  Truth and fancy, after all, are mixed in them, when in the more instructed they are separate; and I doubt if you have considered what would be involved in taking their word for anything.  Half the ghosts of those who died of fever may be walking by now; and kind as these people are, I believe they might still burn a witch.  No, doctor, I admit these people have been badly used, I admit they are in many ways our betters, but I still could not accept anything in their evidence.”

The doctor bowed gravely and respectfully enough, and then, for the last time that day, they saw his rather sinister smile.

“Quite so,” he said.  “But you would have hanged me on their evidence.”

And, turning his back on them, as if automatically, he set his face toward the village, where for so many years he had gone his round.