"Thank you very much," said Fiona. "And now will you please tell me where the Urchin is?"
"Tell you!" exclaimed the centipede. "Why, it was you told me. You prophesied the whole thing."
"I'm sure I don't remember it, then," said Fiona.
"What's the matter with _you_," said the centipede, "is that you refuse to exert your intelligence, such as it is. You should take a lesson by me. You humans are all forgetting nowadays that the spoken word is an instrument of great power, and that once it is launched it goes on and on, and can work magic on its own account, quite independently of you. If you say a thing will happen, it frequently does happen."
"You told the Urchin that if he hurt the shore lark the Little People would take him. Well, they've taken him. That's all."
And the centipede slid down on to the ground, and with something like a chuckle vanished. He had evidently learned from his philosophy to bear with resignation the misfortunes of others.
But Fiona did not set off up a hill at once. After breakfast she went to the bookroom and spoke to her father.
"I have found out where the Urchin is, daddy," she said. "He was carried off by the fairies."
"You have not been long finding out, Fiona," he said. "I thought you had ways and means of your own."
"But, daddy," she said, "I don't _really_ believe it, you know. It sounds so absurd nowadays. Do you believe it?"
"I believe it, yes," said the Student. "I knew yesterday. Now that you know, I may talk to you about it, so far."
"I don't know that I do really know," she said. "Things like that don't _really_ happen, do they? Whoever heard of it?"
"You and I have heard of it," he answered. "And that is enough. The proposition that people are not carried off by fairies is a mere working hypothesis, liable to be overthrown by any one case to the contrary. Well, we've got a case to the contrary, and that's the end of the hypothesis."
"I'm arguing against myself, daddy, you know," she said. "I want to believe that we do know where he is."
"No difficulty at all," said the Student, "to anyone with a properly trained mind, like yours and mine. Take it this way. No one has ever crossed the South Arabian desert or explored the snow ranges of New Guinea, have they? Well, for all anyone can say to the contrary, people may be carried off by fairies every day of the week in New Guinea or South Arabia, mayn't they? It may even be the rule there. It may be a working hypothesis among the pygmies of New Guinea that such a thing _always_ happens--at death, for instance. It would be just as good a working hypothesis as it is that it _never_ happens."