Then the chaplain disappeared. His disappearance was followed by what might be described as an abject silence. The governor eyed his colleagues furtively. At last he stammered out a question. "Well, Major, what do you think of this?" The Major sank into a chair, expressing his thoughts by a gasp. Mr. Paley turned his attention to the doctor. "What do you say, doctor?" "I say?--I say nothing." "I suppose," murmured the Major, in what seemed to be the ghost of his natural voice, "that I did knock him down?" The doctor seemed to have something to say on that point, at any rate. "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. "Excuse me, sir. I said he was a witch." "Your saying that he was a witch--or wizard," remarked the governor, dryly, "will not, I fear, be sufficient excuse, in the eyes of the commissioners, for your throwing a pail of water over the chaplain." "But a man's not answerable for what he does when he's bewitched," persisted the chief warder, with characteristic sturdiness. "It is exactly that reflection which has constrained me to return." They looked up. There was the chaplain standing in the doorway--still with his handkerchief to his nose. "Mr. Murray, you threw a pail of water over me. If you assert that you did it under the influence of witchcraft, I, who have myself been under a spell, am willing to excuse you."