"Because that is unthinkable."
"Sir William Crookes and Dr. Zöllner, you say, believed in these disembodied intelligences—"
"Yes, but they belong to what Haeckel calls the imaginative scientists."
"You needn't quote Haeckel to me, Morton. If I believed what he preaches I would take myself and my children out of the world. I don't see how a man can look a child in the face and say such things. I can't read any of your scientific friends straight along. Their jargon is worse than anything, but I pick out enough to know that they don't believe in anything they can't see, and they won't go out of their way to see things. Do you suppose I'm going to believe that Robbie is nothing but a little animal, and that if he should die his soul would disappear like a vapor?"
"I can only repeat that the converse is unthinkable. There is no room in my philosophy for the re-entrance of the dead."
"Why not? It's all very simple. We're creatures of our surroundings, aren't we? Now, sitting there in the dark to-night, it seemed to me that the people we think of as dead were all about me. It scared me at first; but, really, isn't it the most comforting faith in the world? I've always liked the idea of the Indian's happy 'hunting-grounds'—and this is something like it."
He smiled shrewdly. "That performance to-night and this conversation would make a pretty story to lay before the president of Corlear—now wouldn't it?"
"How do you suppose he will take your going into this investigation?"
"I don't know, but I think he'll 'fire' me instanter."
"Well, let him try it! He wouldn't dare—"