Hanky smiled.  “It would not be proved.  The measurements of a man of twenty or thereabouts would not correspond with this man’s.  All we Professors should attend the inquest, and half Bridgeford is now in Sunch’ston.  No matter though nine-tenths of the marks and measurements corresponded, so long as there is a tenth that does not do so, we should not be flesh and blood if we did not ignore the nine points and insist only on the tenth.  After twenty years we shall find enough to serve our turn.  Think of what all the learning of the country is committed to; think of the change in all our ideas and institutions; think of the King and of Court influence.  I need not enlarge.  We shall not permit the body to be the Sunchild’s.  No matter what evidence you may produce, we shall sneer it down, and say we must have more before you can expect us to take you seriously; if you bring more, we shall pay no attention; and the more you bring the more we shall laugh at you.  No doubt those among us who are by way of being candid will admit that your arguments ought to be considered, but you must not expect that it will be any part of their duty to consider them.

“And even though we admitted that the body had been proved up to the hilt to be the Sunchild’s, do you think that such a trifle as that could affect Sunchildism?  Hardly.  Sunch’ston is no match for Bridgeford and the King; our only difficulty would lie in settling which was the most plausible way of the many plausible ways in which the death could be explained.  We should hatch up twenty theories in less than twenty hours, and the last state of Sunchildism would be stronger than the first.  For the people want it, and so long as they want it they will have it.  At the same time the supposed identification of the body, even by some few ignorant people here, might lead to a local heresy that is as well avoided, and it will be better that your son should arrest the man before the dedication, if he can be found, and throw him into the Blue Pool without any one but ourselves knowing that he has been here at all.”

I need not dwell on the deep disgust with which this speech was listened to, but the Mayor, and Yram, and George said not a word.

“But, Mayoress,” said Panky, who had not opened his lips so far, “are you sure that you are not too hasty in believing this stranger to be the Sunchild?  People are continually thinking that such and such another is the Sunchild come down again from the sun’s palace and going to and fro among us.  How many such stories, sometimes very plausibly told, have we not had during the last twenty years?  They never take root, and die out of themselves as suddenly as they spring up.  That the man is a poacher can hardly be doubted; I thought so the moment I saw him; but I think I can also prove to you that he is not a foreigner, and, therefore, that he is not the Sunchild.  He quoted the Sunchild’s prayer with a corruption that can have only reached him from an Erewhonian source—­”