“I quite agree with you,” exclaimed my father, “it is out of the—­”

“Let me finish what I have to say.  When the rain came so copiously for days, even those who had not seen the miraculous ascent found its consequences come so directly home to them, that they had no difficulty in accepting the report of others.  There was not a farmer or cottager in the land but heaved a sigh of relief at rescue from impending ruin, and they all knew it was the Sunchild who had promised the King that he would make the air-god send it.  So abundantly, you will remember, did it come, that we had to pray to him to stop it, which in his own good time he was pleased to do.”

“I remember,” said my father, who was at last able to edge in a word, “that it nearly flooded me out of house and home.  And yet, in spite of all this, I hear that there are many at Bridgeford who are still hardened unbelievers.”

“Alas! you speak too truly.  Bridgeford and the Musical Banks for the first three years fought tooth and nail to blind those whom it was their first duty to enlighten.  I was a Professor of the hypothetical language, and you may perhaps remember how I was driven from my chair on account of the fearlessness with which I expounded the deeper mysteries of Sunchildism.”

“Yes, I remember well how cruelly—­” but my father was not allowed to get beyond “cruelly.”

“It was I who explained why the Sunchild had represented himself as belonging to a people in many respects analogous to our own, when no such people can have existed.  It was I who detected that the supposed nation spoken of by the Sunchild was an invention designed in order to give us instruction by the light of which we might more easily remodel our institutions.  I have sometimes thought that my gift of interpretation was vouchsafed to me in recognition of the humble services that I was hereby allowed to render.  By the way, you have received no illumination this morning, have you?”

“I never do, sir, when I am in the company of one whose conversation I find supremely interesting.  But you were telling me about Bridgeford:  I live hundreds of miles from Bridgeford, and have never understood the suddenness, and completeness, with which men like Professors Hanky and Panky and Dr. Downie changed front.  Do they believe as you and I do, or did they merely go with the times?  I spent a couple of hours with Hanky and Panky only two evenings ago, and was not so much impressed as I could have wished with the depth of their religious fervour.”

“They are sincere now—­more especially Hanky—­but I cannot think I am judging them harshly, if I say that they were not so at first.  Even now, I fear, that they are more carnally than spiritually minded.  See how they have fought for the aggrandisement of their own order.  It is mainly their doing that the Musical Banks have usurped the spiritual authority formerly exercised by the straighteners.”