Now whether we call it ‘vision’ or ‘optical illusion,’ there can be no doubt that, thus aided by Scripture, Mr. Trimblerigg visualized rapidly and clearly the means to an end which so many desired. And so it came about one Saturday night, while frost held the village water-supply firmly in its grip, and the road running up from the valley slipped with ice, that Bethesda, through a supposed leakage in her heating apparatus, caught fire; and only the fact that Mr. Trimblerigg fetched the fire-engine from the town four miles away, saved it from utter destruction. He had been sent into the town by his mother to do errands, when at the foot of the hill he suddenly remembered Lot’s wife, and looking back saw the chapel windows gustily ablaze, and interpreting the peradventure aright had sped on with the news. The miraculous arrival of the fire-engine with him on it, only half an hour after the villagers’ discovery of an already well-established insurance claim in swift operation, had caused an immense sensation and some inquiry. But Mr. Trimblerigg had a case on which no suspicion could rest; that the fire was fought expeditiously, though under difficulties, was largely owing to him, and the subsequent inquiries of the insurance office agent who came to inspect the damage were only of a formal kind. Every effort had been made, and a half-saved chapel was the result; but its previous dilapidation made it easier to rebuild than to restore, and when a new Bethesda rose from the ruins of the old, the insurance company paid for it. It was two days after the happy catastrophe, that Davidina remarked (when, to be sure, he was taking them to light the lamp in another room), ‘I wish you wouldn’t always go taking away the matches!’ ‘I’m bringing them back,’ said Jonathan correctively. ‘You didn’t the last time,’ Davidina retorted. And at the word and the tone of her voice, Jonathan trepidated and fled. Was it ‘vision’ that made him do so, or only optical illusion on the mental plane? For as far as I have been able to probe into Davidina’s mind, which is not always clear to me, she knew nothing. It was merely her way: the hunting instinct was strong in her, and he her spiritual quarry: never in all their born days together was she to let him go. Of course Mr. Trimblerigg did not go on doing things like that. It was an act of crude callow youth, done at a time when the romantic instinct takes unbalanced forms; yet in a way it was representative of him, and helped me to a larger insight into his character and motives. For here was Mr. Trimblerigg, thus early, genuinely anxious to have guidance from above for the exploitation of his superabundant energies; and when, at first showing, the guidance seemed rather to head him off from being energetic at all, he persisted till his faith in himself found ratification, and thereafter went his way with the assurance that what he decided to do must almost necessarily be right.