“Their faith puts faith into you. If they believe what you say, you say to yourself that there must be some truth in it. If you keep telling them you're Jesus Christ, there's nothing to prove you ain't, and if you tell them you're God, who ever saw God, and who can deny it? You can't deny it yourself--” “Hold on!” the old man said. He had risen, and he began to walk up and down, swaying his figure and tilting his head from side to side, and frowning his shaggy eyebrows together in a tangled hedge. Suddenly, he stopped before Dylks. “Why, you poor devil, you're not in any unusual fix. It must have been so with all the impostors in the world, from Mahomet up and down! Why, there isn't a false prophet in the Old Testament that couldn't match experiences with you! That's the way it's always gone: first the liar tells his lie, and some of the fools believe it, and proselyte the other fools, and when there are enough of them, their faith begins to work on the liar's own unbelief, till he takes his lie for the truth. Was that the way, you miserable skunk?” “It was exactly the way, Squire Braile, and you can't tell how it gains on you, step by step. You see all those educated people like Mr. Enraghty, and all those good men like Mr. Hingston taking it for gospel, and you can't deny it yourself. They convince you of it.” “Exactly! And then, when the Little Flock gathers in all the mentally lame, halt and blind in the settlement, you couldn't get out of it if you had the whole Herd of the Lost to back you, with the Hounds yelping round to keep your courage up; you've got to stay just where you put yourself, heigh?” “There wouldn't,” Dylks said, drying his eyes on a tatter of his coat sleeve, “be so much trouble if it wasn't for the miracles.” “Yes,” Braile replied to the thoughtful mood which he had fallen into, rather than to Dylks, “the ignorant are sure to want a sign, though the wise could get along without it. And you have to promise them a sign; you have to be fool enough to do that, though you know well enough you can't work the miracle.” “You ain't sure you can't. You think, maybe--” “Then, why,” the Squire shouted at him, “why in the devil's name, _didn't_ you work the miracle at Hingston's mill that night? Why didn't you turn that poor fool woman's bolt of linsey-woolsey into seamless raiment?” Dylks did not answer. “Why didn't you do it? Heigh?” “I thought maybe--I didn't know but I did do it.” “What do you mean?” “When I came up outside and told them that the miracle had been worked and the seamless raiment was inside the bolt, I thought it must be there.” “Why, in the name of--” “I had prayed so hard for help to do it that I thought it must be.” “You prayed? To whom?” “To--God.” “To yourself?” Dylks was silent again in the silence of a self-convicted criminal. He did not move.