“The University of Edinburgh! Don’t know much indeed, I—“

“About hexes and doodles and charms and beseechings and suchlike.”

“I know that claiming to use such dark and invisible powers is a burning offense in the lands that obey the Lord Protector, Mistress Faith, though in his mercy he merely banishes those who—“

“Well looky there, that’s my point,” she said triumphantly. “They’re not likely to teach you about that in university, now, are they? But it’s the way we live here, and calling it a superstition—“

“I called it hysteria—“

“That don’t change the fact that it works.”

“I understand that you believe that it works,” said Thrower patiently. “But everything in the world is either science or miracles. Miracles came from God in ancient times, but those times are over. Today if we wish to change the world, it is not magic but science that will give us our tools.”

From the set of her face, Thrower could see that he wasn’t making much impression on her.

“Science,” she said. “Like feeling head bumps?”

He doubted she had tried very hard to hide her scorn. “Phrenology is an infant science,” he said coldly, “and there are many flaws, but I am seeking to discover—“

She laughed—a girlish laugh, that made her seem much younger than a woman who had borne fourteen children. “Sorry, Reverend Thrower, but I just remembered how Measure called it ‘dowsing for brains,’ and he allowed as how you’d have slim luck in these parts.”

True words, thought Reverend Thrower, but he was wise enough not to say so. “Mistress Faith, I spoke as I did to let people understand that there are superior ways of thought in the world today, and we need no longer be bound by the delusions of—“

It was no use. Her patience had quite run out. “My boy looks about to get himself smacked with a spare joist if he don’t let up on them other boys, Reverend, so you’ll just have to excuse me.” And off she went, to fall on six-year-old Alvin and three-year-old Calvin like the vengeance of the Lord. She was a champion tongue-lasher. He could hear the scolding from where he stood, and that with the breeze blowing the other way, too.

Such ignorance, said Thrower to himself. I am needed here, not only as a man of God among near heathens, but also as a man of science among superstitious fools. Somebody whispers a curse and then, six months later, something bad happens to the person cursed—it always does, something bad happens to everybody at least twice a year—and it makes them quite certain that their curse had malefic effect. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.