For then, as they watched, as the clock ticked the minutes loudly on the mantelshelf, as the boy beside him breathed hard, and Paul himself clasped and unclasped his hands, the tiny shining thing stirred, trembled, flickered as it were, made spasmodic movements, and finally rose, trembling, to stand on its point. Paul swallowed in his throat, and Leather cried out. "It's a trick," he exclaimed sharply. The pin fell back silently. "Oh no, how could it be?" said Childers quietly. "I am not so good a conjurer as all that." "How on earth----" began Dick. Leather stood up. "I am playing cricket at three," he said abruptly. "I fear I must go. I--I beg your pardon if I was--was rude, Mr. Childers. But--but----" "That is quite all right. Perhaps I should not have said what I did. But there is nothing really strange in what you have seen, Mr. Leather. I hope I have not put you off your game." All that afternoon, Paul and the visitor sat by the sea on the sand and talked together. The elder man was a quiet, serious, thoughtful person who made no attempt whatever to destroy any of his young companion's beliefs, and really very little to instruct him. But Paul was inexorable. His inchoate eyes fastened on the other, he heard of auras and astral bodies and familiar spirits with an ever-deepening amazement. It was not that the things themselves made much of a contribution to his mind; he was not, perhaps, ready for them; but it was Childers himself, especially in contrast to Mr. Stuart, Leather, Henderson, Dick, who affected him profoundly. It was his first contact with a true but alien spirituality, his first lesson in comparative religion. He saw at once how closely a scheme of things that allowed for transition planes of spiritual life, the interweaving of the material and spiritual, and the help of unseen beings, fitted in with Catholicism. Here, from another source, came confirmation of his new surmises. And above all, here was lacking that ignorant, dogmatic temper of evangelicalism, indifferent to beauty and living, with which he was finding himself increasingly at odds. Towards the end of the afternoon, he ventured the supreme question which had been on his lips for long, but which he was more than half-afraid to speak. "Mr. Childers," he asked, "what do your spirit-guides say of Christ?" The clear blue eyes looked into his serenely. "They do not say much," he said. "But why not?" "He was strikingly adept," said Childers, "and has advanced far beyond us. But we shall see Him at some distant time, if we continue steadily to progress." "But we know Him," objected Paul, "here and now." "You feel the influence of His Spirit, for all spiritual living has left its impress which those who follow after may enjoy along the road." "Along the road?" "Yes. Prayer, Fasting, Self-discipline. It is very hard." Paul shook his head. "'My yoke is easy and My burden is light,'" he quoted.