In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and making Mr. Maydig duck every time it came near him.  “Stop there, will you?” said Mr. Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air.  “I could change it back to a bowl of flowers,” he said, and after replacing the pigeon on the table worked that miracle.  “I expect you will want your pipe in a bit,” he said, and restored the tobacco-jar.

Mr. Maydig had followed all these later changes in a sort of ejaculatory silence.  He stared at Mr. Fotheringay and in a very gingerly manner picked up the tobacco-jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. “Well!” was the only expression of his feelings.

“Now, after that it’s easier to explain what I came about,” said Mr. Fotheringay; and proceeded to a lengthy and involved narrative of his strange experiences, beginning with the affair of the lamp in the Long Dragon and complicated by persistent allusions to Winch.  As he went on, the transient pride Mr. Maydig’s consternation had caused passed away; he became the very ordinary Mr. Fotheringay of everyday intercourse again.  Mr. Maydig listened intently, the tobacco-jar in his hand, and his bearing changed also with the course of the narrative.  Presently, while Mr. Fotheringay was dealing with the miracle of the third egg, the minister interrupted with a fluttering, extended hand.

“It is possible,” he said.  “It is credible.  It is amazing, of course, but it reconciles a number of amazing difficulties.  The power to work miracles is a gift—­a peculiar quality like genius or second sight; hitherto it has come very rarely and to exceptional people.  But in this case...I have always wondered at the miracles of Mahomet, and at Yogi’s miracles, and the miracles of Madame Blavatsky.  But, of course—­Yes, it is simply a gift!  It carries out so beautifully the arguments of that great thinker”—­ Mr. Maydig’s voice sank—­“his Grace the Duke of Argyll.  Here we plumb some profounder law—­deeper than the ordinary laws of nature.  Yes—­yes.  Go on.  Go on!”

Mr. Fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure with Winch, and Mr. Maydig, no longer overawed or scared, began to jerk his limbs about and interject astonishment.  “It’s this what troubled me most,” proceeded Mr. Fotheringay; “it’s this I’m most mijitly in want of advice for; of course he’s at San Francisco—­wherever San Francisco may be—­but of course it’s awkward for both of us, as you’ll see, Mr. Maydig.  I don’t see how he can understand what has happened, and I daresay he’s scared and exasperated something tremendous, and trying to get at me.  I daresay he keeps on starting off to come here.  I send him back, by a miracle, every few hours, when I think of it.  And, of course, that’s a thing he won’t be able to understand, and it’s bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes a ticket every time it will cost him a lot of money.  I done the best I could for him, but, of course, it’s difficult for him to put himself in my place.  I thought afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, you know—­if Hades is all it’s supposed to be—­before I shifted him.  In that case I suppose they’d have locked him up in San Francisco.  Of course I willed him a new suit of clothes on him directly I thought of it.  But, you see, I’m already in a deuce of a tangle——­”