ssionate as her
weakness allowed:--"Phoebe, dearest Phoebe, my lady is God's Angel, come
from Heaven to drive the fiend out of the heart of my poor son." And
Phoebe, to whom everything like concealment was hateful, wanted sorely
to repeat to her ladyship the conversation which ended in this climax.
Otherwise, how could the young lady come to know what was passing in
Maisie's mind?

She approached the subject with caution. "My dear sister's mind," said
she, "has been greatly tried. So we must think the less of exciting
fancies. But I would not say her nay in anything she would have me
think."

Gwen's attention was caught. "What sort of things?" said she. "Yes--some
more coffee, please, and a great deal of sugar!"

"Strange, odd things. Stories, about Van Diemen's Land."

Gwen had a clue, from her tone. "Has she been telling you about the
witch-doctor, and the devil, and the scorpion, and the little beast?"

"They were in her story. It made my flesh creep to hear so outlandish a
tale. And she told your ladyship?"

"Oh dear yes! She has told me all about it! And not only me, but Mr.
Torrens. The old darling! Did she tell you of the little polecat beast
the doctor ate, who was called a devil, and how he possessed the
doctor--no getting rid of him?"

"She told me something like that."

"And what did you say to her?"

"I said that Our Lord cast out devils that possessed the swine, and had
He cast them again out of the swine, they might have possessed
Christians. For I thought, to please Maisie, I might be forgiven such
speech."

"Why not? That was all right." Gwen could not understand why Scripture
should be inadmissible, or prohibited.

Granny Marrable seemed to think it might be the latter. "I would not be
thought," she said, "to compare what we are taught in the Bible with ...
with _things_. Our Lord was in Galilee, and we are taught what came to
pass. This was in The Colonies, where any one of us might be, to-day or
to-morrow."

Gwen appreciated the distinction. It would clearly be irreverent to
mention a nowadays-devil, close at hand, in the same breath as the
remoter Gadarenes. She said nothing about Galilee being there still,
with perhaps the identical breed of swine, and even madmen. The Granny's
inner vision of Scripture history was unsullied by realisms--a true
history, of course, but clear of vulgar actualities. Still, something
was on her mind that she was bound to speak about to her ladyship, and