Had anyone half an hour earlier propounded the statement that a woman could bear a closer resemblance to a horse than to her own portrait, he would have treated the proposition as one which no amount of evidence could make good. So far from the evidence proving the proposition true, he would have said, it is the proposition which proves the evidence false. Otherwise, what is the use of the Inflexible Method? But now the thing was flashed on him with the brightness of authentic revelation, and there was no gainsaying its truth. Not once during the five-and-thirty years of his mourning for Ethelberta had anything happened to bring her so vividly to mind; not even among the dreams that haunt the borderland of sleep and waking; no, nor even when he listened to the great singer whose voice had pierced his heart with the sad and angry music of Heine's bitterest song. Professor Scattergood was a firm believer in the efficacy of _a priori_ thought; but though by means of it he had excogitated a system in which the plan of an entire Universe was sufficiently laid down, there was not one of his principles either primary or secondary which could have built a niche for the experience he had just undergone in the horse-dealer's yard. As he neared his doorstep the confusion of his mind suddenly ranged itself into form and gave birth to an articulate thought. "I'm sure," he said to himself, drawing his latch-key out of his pocket and inserting it in the keyhole--"I'm sure that Ethelberta is not far off. Yes, as sure as I am of anything in this world." II The "horse-sense," which gave Professor Scattergood his reputation in the stables, was always accompanied by a well-marked physical sensation--to wit, a continuous tingling at the back of the head, seemingly located at an exact spot in the cortex of the brain. So long as the back of his head was tingling, every horse was completely at Scattergood's mercy; he could do with it whatever he willed. But I have it on his own authority that at the moment he cast eyes on his new mare the sensation suddenly ceased and his horse-sense deserted him.