much faith in the soul, and I pray to God that I may be right. Ah! there
it comes in. If a God, why not the rest, and who shall say there is no
God? Somehow it seems to me that more than once in my life I have seen
His Finger.

Yet I pray that I am right, for if I am wrong what a welcome awaits me
yonder when grief and chloral and that "slight weakness of the heart"
have done their work.

Yes--five thousand of them or more in Dunchester alone, and, making
every allowance, I suppose that in this one city there were very many of
these--young people mostly--who owed their deaths to me, since it was
my persuasion, my eloquent arguments, working upon the minds of their
prejudiced and credulous elders, that surely, if indirectly, brought
their doom upon them. "A doctor is not infallible, he may make
mistakes." Quite so, and if a mistake of his should kill a few
thousands, why, that is the act of God (or of Fate) working through his
blindness. But if it does not happen to have been a mistake, if, for
instance, all those dead, should they still live in any place or shape,
could say to me, "James Therne, you are the murderer of our bodies,
since, for your own ends, you taught us that which you knew _not_ to be
the truth."

How then? I ask. So--let them say it if they will. Let all that great
cloud of witnesses compass me about, lads and maidens, children and
infants, whose bones cumber the churchyards yonder in Dunchester. I defy
them, for it is done and cannot be undone. Yet, in their company are two
whose eyes I dread to meet: Jane, my daughter, whose life was sacrificed
through me, and Ernest Merchison, her lover, who went to seek her in the
tomb.