"Knock him down!--I should think you did! Like a log of wood!"
The Major glanced at the governor. Mr. Paley shook his head. The Major groaned. The governor began to be a little agitated.
"Something must be done. It is out of the question that such a scandal should be allowed to go out into the world. I do not hesitate to say that if the chaplain sends in to the commissioners the report which he threatens to send, the situation will be to the last degree unpleasant for all of us."
"The point is," observed the doctor--"are we, collectively and individually, subject to periodical attacks of temporary insanity?"
"Speaking for myself, I should say certainly not."
Dr. Livermore turned on the governor.
"Then perhaps you will suggest a hypothesis which will reasonably account for what has just occurred." The governor was silent. "Unless you are prepared to seek for a cause in the regions of phenomena."
"Supposing," murmured the Major, "there is such a thing as witchcraft after all?"
"We should have the Psychical Research Society down on us, if we had nobody else, if we appended our names to a confession of faith." The doctor thrust his thumbs into his waistcoat arm-holes. "And I should lose every patient I have."
There was a tapping at the door. In response to the governor's invitation, the chief warder entered. In general there was in Mr. Murray's bearing a not distant suggestion of an inflated bantam-cock or pouter-pigeon. It was curious to observe how anything in the shape of inflation was absent now. He touched his hat to the governor--his honest, rubicund, somewhat pugnacious face, eloquent of the weight that was on his mind.