takes a
ticket every time it will cost him a lot of money. I done the best I could
for him, but, of course, it's difficult for him to put himself in my
place. I thought afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, you
know--if Hades is all it's supposed to be--before I shifted him. In that
case I suppose they'd have locked him up in San Francisco. Of course I
willed him a new suit of clothes on him directly I thought of it. But, you
see, I'm already in a deuce of a tangle----"

Mr. Maydig looked serious. "I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it's a
difficult position. How you are to end it..." He became diffuse and
inconclusive.

"However, we'll leave Winch for a little and discuss the larger question.
I don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. I
don't think there is any taint of criminality about it at all, Mr.
Fotheringay--none whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. No,
it's miracles--pure miracles--miracles, if I may say so, of the very
highest class."

He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while Mr. Fotheringay sat
with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. "I
don't see how I'm to manage about Winch," he said.

"A gift of working miracles--apparently a very powerful gift," said Mr.
Maydig, "will find a way about Winch--never fear. My dear sir, you are a
most important man--a man of the most astonishing possibilities. As
evidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do..."

"Yes, _I've_ thought of a thing or two," said Mr. Fotheringay. "But--
some of the things came a bit twisty. You saw that fish at first? Wrong
sort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask someone."

"A proper course," said Mr. Maydig, "a very proper course--altogether the
proper course." He stopped and looked at Mr. Fotheringay. "It's
practically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. If
they really _are_ ... If they really are all they seem to be."

And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind
the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr.
Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to work miracles.
The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. He
will object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this
story are improbable, that if any things of the sort already described had
indeed occurred, they would have