thirsty ground. Luck had been with Ingles the Faith Healer. Whether he
knew of the existence of this spring, or whether he chanced upon it, he
did not say; but while he held Jansen in the palm of his hand, in the
feverish days that followed, there were many who attached mysterious
significance to it, who claimed for it supernatural origin. In any case,
the one man who had known of the existence of this spring was far away
from Jansen, and he did not return till a day of reckoning came for the
Faith Healer.

Meanwhile Jansen made pilgrimage to the Springs of Healing, and at
unexpected times Ingles suddenly appeared in the town, and stood at
street corners; and in his "Patmian voice," as Flood Rawley the lawyer
called it, warned the people to flee their sins, and purifying their
hearts, learn to cure all ills of mind and body, the weaknesses of the
sinful flesh and the "ancient evil" in their souls, by faith that saves.

"'Is not the life more than meat'" he asked them. "And if, peradventure,
there be those among you who have true belief in hearts all purged of
evil, and yet are maimed, or sick of body, come to me, and I will lay my
hands upon you, and I will heal you." Thus he cried.

There were those so wrought upon by his strange eloquence and spiritual
passion, so hypnotised by his physical and mental exaltation, that they
rose up from the hand-laying and the prayer eased of their ailments.
Others he called upon to lie in the hot spring at the foot of the hill
for varying periods, before the laying on of hands, and these also,
crippled, or rigid with troubles' of the bone, announced that they were
healed.

People flocked from other towns, and though, to some who had been cured,