r that it frightened the
bairnies out of their wits, specially as it was first carried all round
the place on a parish coffin!"

"What a hateful plan that effigy-burning is!" said Erica. "Were you not
really hurt at all when they upset your cab?"

"Perhaps a little bruised," said Raeburn, "and somewhat angry with my
charitable opponents. I didn't so much mind being overturned, but I hate
being balked. They shall have the lecture, however, before long; I'm
not going to be beaten. On the whole, they couldn't have chosen a worse
night for their little game. I seriously thought we should never grope
our way home through that fog. It has quite taken me back to my young
days when this sort of thing met one on every hand; and there was no
little daughter to cheer me up then, and very often no supper either!"

"That was when you were living in Blank Street?"

"Yes, in a room about the size of a sentry box. It was bearable all
except the black beetles! I've never seen such beetles before or since
twice the size of the ordinary ones. I couldn't convince the landlady
that they even existed; she always maintained that they never rose to
the attics; but one night I armed myself with Cruden's Concordance and,
thanks to its weight and my good aim, killed six at a time, and produced
the corpses as evidence. I shall never forget the good lady's face!
'You see, sir,' she said, 'they never come by day; they 'ates the light
because their deeds is evil.'"

"Were the beetles banished after that?" asked Erica, laughing.

"No, they went on to the bitter end," said Raeburn with one of his
bright, humorous looks. "And I believe the landlady put it all down to
my atheistical views a just retribution for harboring such a notorious
fellow in her house! But there, my child, we mustn't sit up any longer
gossiping; run off to bed. I'll see that the lights are all out."

CHAPTER XXXVII. Dreeing Out the Inch

Skepticism for that century we must consider as the decay of
old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new,
better, and wider ways an inevitable thing. We will not
blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We will
understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction
of everlasting substances; that skepticism, as sorrowful and
hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning.
Carlyle

One June evening, an elderly man with closely cropped iron-gray hair,
might have b