The doctor turned his face towards Captain Lawton while speaking, but the elevation of the head prevented his eyes from resting on the grave countenance maintained by the trooper. Katy listened with admiring attention, and when the other had done, she added,—
“Then Harvey is a disbeliever in the tides.”
“Not believe in the tides!” repeated the healer of bodies in astonishment. “Does the man distrust his senses? But perhaps it is the influence of the moon that he doubts.”
“That he does!” exclaimed Katy, shaking with delight at meeting with a man of learning, who could support her opinions. “If you was to hear him talk, you would think he didn’t believe there was such a thing as a moon at all.”
“It is the misfortune of ignorance and incredulity, madam, that they feed themselves. The mind, once rejecting useful information, insensibly leans to superstition and conclusions on the order of nature, that are not less prejudicial to the cause of truth, than they are at variance with the first principles of human knowledge.”
The spinster was too much awe-struck to venture an undigested reply to this speech; and the surgeon, after pausing a moment in a kind of philosophical disdain, continued,—
“That any man in his senses can doubt of the flux of the tides is more than I could have thought possible; yet obstinacy is a dangerous inmate to harbor, and may lead us into any error, however gross.”
“You think, then, they have an effect on the flux?” said the housekeeper, inquiringly.
Miss Peyton rose and beckoned her nieces to give her their assistance in the adjoining pantry, while for a moment the dark visage of the attentive Lawton was lighted by an animation that vanished by an effort, as powerful and as sudden, as the one that drew it into being.
After reflecting whether he rightly understood the meaning of the other, the surgeon, making due allowance for the love of learning, acting upon a want of education, replied,—