"I see you are still doubtful," he said, "though you have seen the thing with your own eyes. Believe me, there was something more behind the quarrel between the spirit of Strake and the spirit of the house of Aylmer. Besides, you have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?"
"I say I'm an agnostic," replied Father Brown, smiling.
"Nonsense," said Aylmer impatiently. "It's your business to believe things."
"Well, I do believe some things, of course," conceded Father Brown; "and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things."
Aylmer was leaning forward, and looking at him with a strange intensity that was almost like that of a mesmerist.
"You do believe it," he said. "You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many
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