ilent
in her chair. Only her deep, regular breathing showed that she was
there. The mist still whirled upon the table.

"You have disturbed the harmony. She will not answer."

"But we have learned already all that she can tell--_hein_? For my part
I wish to see something I have never seen before."

"What then?"

"You will let me try?"

"What would you do?"

"I have said to you that thoughts are things. Now I wish to _prove_ it
to you, and to show you that which is only a thought. Yes, yes, I can do
it and you will see. Now I ask you only to sit still and say nothing,
and keep ever your hands quiet upon the table."

The room was blacker and more silent than ever. The same feeling of
apprehension which had lain heavily upon me at the beginning of the
seance was back at my heart once more. The roots of my hair were
tingling.

"It is working! It is working!" cried the Frenchman, and there was a
crack in his voice as he spoke which told me that he also was strung to
his tightest.

The luminous fog drifted slowly off the table, and wavered and flickered
across the room. There in the farther and darkest corner it gathered and
glowed, hardening down into a shining core--a strange, shifty, luminous,
and yet non-illuminating patch of radiance, bright itself, but throwing
no rays into the darkness. It had changed from a greenish-yellow to a
dusky sullen red. Then round this centre there coiled a dark, smoky
substance, thickening, hardening, growing denser and blacker. And then
the light went out, smothered in that which had grown round it.

"It has gone."

"Hush--there's something in the room."

We heard it in the corner where the light had been, something which
breathed deeply and fidgeted in the darkness.

"What is it? Le Duc, what have you done?"

"It is all right. No harm will come." The Frenchman's voice was treble
with agitation.

"Good heavens, Moir, there's a large animal in the room. Here it is,
close by my chair! Go away! Go away!"

It was Harvey Deacon's voice, and then came the sound of a blow upon
some hard object. And then ... And then ... how can I tell you what
happened then?

Some huge thing hurtled against us in the darkness, rearing, stamping,
smashing, springing, snorting. The table was splintered. We were
scattered in every direction. It clattered and scrambled amongst us,
rushing with horrible energy from one corner of the room to another. We
were all screaming with fear, grovelling up