Mr. Trimblerigg read the passage twice; he did not like it, it perturbed him. Assuming the Lion to mean what he thought it to mean, this was an event which no reading of history could justify: it never had been true, it never would be true. In the other prophecies it was quite evident that the Lion was the chosen beast, well-pleasing to the Lord; how, then, did it come into this forecast of divine dispensation that the Lion should go so far astray? And who the dickens was the Ass? He looked ahead wherever he saw Ass and Lion figuring together; and the obscurities and perversities of the prophecy became more confounding. The Lion was clearly not doing the right thing; it was following the Ass into a course of action which was leading to no good, which was, in fact, morally wrong; and so far as he could place the prophecies in their chronological sequence, these misdoings must some of them be quite recent, and some actually taking place now. Unedified, he began turning the pages in haste, to find something better; and so doing--it was a pity!--managed to miss this, which caught my quicker eye: ‘And the Ass said to the Lion, “Let us drive the scapegoat into the wilderness and there skin it; and from the skin of the scapegoat let us make coats for ourselves and for our children.” And the Lion said, “Will it be enough?” And the Ass answered, “It shall be enough; for we will stretch it this way and that and make it enough; or if so it be not enough, then we will wait till a second skin be grown, and will take that also; and after that another, and another, till we be satisfied.” Then said the Lion, “But if he die of it, how shall we be satisfied?” And the Ass answered, “We will not let him die, till we be satisfied.” So together they drove the scapegoat into the wilderness, and there they lost him. And the Lion reproached the Ass saying, “Where is the skin of the scapegoat that you promised me?” And the Ass answered, “A proposal is not a promise, neither is a promise a performance. Let it suffice that we have driven the scapegoat into the wilderness, and that he will presently die there. What matter how he dies, so long as he does die?” But the Lion said, “I have no coats for my children, and I am not satisfied.”’ Had Mr. Trimblerigg read that, I wonder what he would have made of it? Had he done so his attitude toward prophecy might have altered. He might have given the box back to Isabel Sparling ‘unopened,’ without having found what followed.