Mr. Coventry responded, “It’s awfully tempting; but I suspect the traditional part of my story is slightly embellished, so the historical part must be accurate.  What the box did really contain, to my knowledge, was a rush-wick, much thicker than they are made nowadays:  and this rush-wick was impregnated with grease, and even lightly coated with a sort of brown wafer-like paste.  The rector thinks it was a combination of fine dust from the box with the original grease.  He shall show it you, if you are curious to see it.”

“Of course we are curious.  Oh, Mr. Raby, what a strange story.  And how well he told it.”

“Admirably.  We must drink his health.”

“I’ll wish it him instead, because I require all my reason just now to understand his story.  And I don’t understand it, after all.  There:  you found the candle, and so it is all true.  But what does the rector think?”

“Well, he says there is no connection whatever between the rush-wick and—­”

“Don’t tell her what he says,” cried Raby, with a sudden fury that made Grace start and open her eyes.  “I know the puppy.  He is what is called a divine nowadays; but used to be called a skeptic.  There never was so infidel an age.  Socinus was content to prove Jesus Christ a man; but Renan has gone and proved him a Frenchman.  Nothing is so gullible as an unbeliever.  The right reverend father in God, Cocker, has gnawed away the Old Testament:  the Oxford doctors are nibbling away the New:  nothing escapes but the apocrypha:  yet these same skeptics believe the impudent lies, and monstrous arithmetic of geology, which babbles about a million years, a period actually beyond the comprehension of the human intellect; and takes up a jaw-bone, that some sly navvy has transplanted over-night from the churchyard into Lord knows what stratum, fees the navvy, gloats over the bone, and knocks the Bible down with it.  No, Mr. Coventry, your story is a good one, and well told; don’t let us defile it with the comments of a skeptical credulous pedant.  Fill your glass, sir.  Here’s to old religion, old stories, old songs, old houses, old wine, old friends, or” (recovering himself with admirable grace) “to new friends that are to be old ones ere we die.  Come, let the stronger vessel drink, and the weaker vessel sip, and all say together, after me—­

     “Well may we all be,
     Ill may we never see,
     That make good company,
     Beneath the roof of Raby.”

When this rude rhyme had been repeated in chorus, there was a little silence, and the conversation took a somewhat deeper tone.  It began through Grace asking Mr. Raby, with all the simplicity of youth, whether he had ever seen anything supernatural with his own eyes.  “For instance,” said she, “this deserted church of yours, that you say the shepherd said he saw on fire—­did you see that?”