"I will, if you can prove it to me!"
"What proof shall I offer you?" asked Gud. For while he knew that proof was not necessary to faith, yet he was willing to humor the poor old skeptic because he was so weighted down with his burden of doubts.
"If you be Gud," said the skeptic, "then you should know all things."
"And that I do."
"Very well," said the skeptic, "how mad is a wet hen?"
Whereupon Gud called down fire from the heaven of that place and smote the blasphemer so that he died.
But when Gud called down the fire that smote the skeptic, alas, he destroyed the church house also. The next morning when the sun arose, behold the spot where the church had been was a greensward of two-bladed grass. But presently worshippers came and seated themselves upon the grass and lifted up their eyes in prayer.
Gud did not wait to see who answered their prayers, for he had gone on into a realm where the nights are as cold as greed, and where little stars are born—and comets, like tadpoles, lose their tails, and burst into shining suns.
And yet again Gud passed on beyond all stars and on and on until he reached the limits of thoughts, beyond which were only dim traces of imagination. And passing still on and ever on he came to a place where only the hope of faith abides, and lo, he was confronted here with a great wall of light.
And Gud knew—for he still knew all things—that this wall of light was the great and mighty wall that flings its shining reaches round about the City of the Forgotten Ghosts. These ghosts feared that dark memories, which were their only enemies, might find them out, so they had builded this mighty wall of light about their ghostly city.