Everything became perfectly still. He perceived that he was standing
erect.
"So _you_ say," said a voice.
He opened his eyes. He was in the bar of the Long Dragon, arguing about
miracles with Toddy Beamish. He had a vague sense of some great thing
forgotten that instantaneously passed. You see that, except for the loss
of his miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind
and memory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when
this story began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told
here, knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. And among
other things, of course, he still did not believe in miracles.
"I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't possibly happen," he
said, "whatever you like to hold. And I'm prepared to prove it up to the
hilt."
"That's what _you_ think," said Toddy Beamish, and "Prove it if you
can."
"Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearly
understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course
of nature done by power of Will...."