“Most certainly,” answered Donal. “And if this be the truth, as I fully expect it will prove, then it is well it should be found to be. But I should have liked better it had been something we could not explain.”
“I doubt if I understand you.”
“Things that cannot be explained so widen the horizon around us! open to us fresh regions for question and answer, for possibility and delight! They are so many kernels of knowledge closed in the hard nuts of seeming contradiction.—You know, my lady, there are stories of certain houses being haunted by a mysterious music presaging evil to the family?”
“I have heard of such music. But what can be the use of it?”
“I do not know. I see not the smallest use in it. If it were of use it would surely be more common! If it were of use, why should those who have it be of the class less favoured, so to speak, of the Lord of the universe, and the families of his poor never have it?”
“Perhaps for the same reason that they have their other good things in this life!” said Arctura.
“I am answered,” confessed Donal, “and have no more to say. These tales, if they require of us a belief in any special care over such houses, as if they were more precious in the eyes of God than the poorest cottage in the land, I cast them from me.”
“But,” said Arctura, in a deprecating tone, “are not those houses which have more influence more important than the others?”
“Surely—those which have more good influence. But such are rarely the great houses of a country. Our Lord was not an Asmonaean prince, but the son of a humble maiden, his reputed father a working man.”
“I do not see—I should like to understand how that has to do with it.”