When the rain came so copiously for
days, even those who had not seen the miraculous ascent found its
consequences come so directly home to them, that they had no difficulty
in accepting the report of others. There was not a farmer or cottager in
the land but heaved a sigh of relief at rescue from impending ruin, and
they all knew it was the Sunchild who had promised the King that he would
make the air-god send it. So abundantly, you will remember, did it come,
that we had to pray to him to stop it, which in his own good time he was
pleased to do."
"I remember," said my father, who was at last able to edge in a word,
"that it nearly flooded me out of house and home. And yet, in spite of
all this, I hear that there are many at Bridgeford who are still hardened
unbelievers."
"Alas! you speak too truly. Bridgeford and the Musical Banks for the
first three years fought tooth and nail to blind those whom it was their
first duty to enlighten. I was a Professor of the hypothetical language,
and you may perhaps remember how I was driven from my chair on account of
the fearlessness with which I expounded the deeper mysteries of
Sunchildism."
"Yes, I remember well how cruelly--" but my father was not allowed to get
beyond "cruelly."
"It was I who explained why the Sunchild had represented himself as
belonging to a people in many respects analogous to our own, when no such
people can have existed.
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