"It's simple, Father. He was perfectly right. It is no miracle, really, as he himself said. There is psychic power. It is as real a thing as that of my muscles, perhaps in a sense more real because more fundamental. All ultimate power may be psychic. And what he did with a pin, all the mystic saints have done, when necessary, again and again. Only they have done so under God and at His direction. Maybe God Himself, incarnate, only made use of some such hidden human power of His creation, when He walked the waves."
"Then Childers was right?" asked Paul, glancing at the priest however. Etheridge seemed to be contradicting the verdict of his friend.
"Right, and from our standpoint wrong too, Mr. Kestern. So far as his explanation of the pin went, he was right, but he was in the wrong since he was playing with a power only to be exercised along the lines revealed; and he was deluded by Satan when he spoke as he did of God."
"By Satan?"
"I have no doubt at all. It always begins so. He lies in wait to deceive."
"I don't understand," said Paul, bewildered. "Childers was a man of prayer and of great reverence. He spoke very kindly even of Catholicism."
"That," said Etheridge gravely, "I fear the most."
Paul studied his face intently. He was looking out of the cottage window at the broad high-road, his features very set and grave, and with a strange mask of pain lying upon their cheery commonplace exterior that was not good to see.
He seemed to become aware of the other's examination, and turned to him. "It is like this," he said. "God has marked out the spiritual way. He has hedged and protected it. Souls may go safely there very, very far, even here, towards the celestial city. But if they stray off that path for any reason, why, Mr. Kestern, in the woods and hollows lurk enemies that let none escape."
"How do you know?" burst out Paul, vehemently. "Does the Church definitely say so?"