earnest,"
Rochester whispered.

The judge laid his hand upon his host's shoulder. There was a curious
gleam in those deep-set eyes.

"Let him go on," he said. "This is interesting. I begin to remember."

"We all have a hobby, I suppose," Saton continued. "Mine has always
been the study of the least understood of the sciences--I mean
occultism. I, too, was prejudiced at first. I saw wonderful things in
India, and my British instincts rose up like a wall. I did not
believe. I refused to believe my eyes. In Egypt, and on the west coast
of Africa, I had the chance of learning new things, and again I
refused. But there came a time when even I was impressed. Then I began
to study. I began to see that some of those things which we accept as
being wonderful, and from which we turn away with a shrug of the
shoulders, are capable of explanation--are submissive, in fact, to
natural laws. There is not a doubt that in the generations to come,
people will smile upon us, and pity us for our colossal stupidity."

"No wise person, my dear Mr. Saton," Mrs. Hinckley remarked, "would
deny that there is yet a great deal to learn in life. But tell us
exactly to what you refer?"

Saton raised his dark eyes and looked steadfastly at her.

"I mean, madam," he said, "the apprehension of things happening in the
present in other parts, the apprehension of things about to happen in
the future. Our brain we realize, and our muscles, but there is a
subtler part of ourselves, of which we are as ignorant to-day as our
forefathers were of electricity."

Lady Mary drew a little sigh.

"This is so fascinating," she said. "Do you really believe, then, that
it is possible to foretell the future?"

"Why not?" Saton answered quietly. "The world is governed by laws just
as inevitable as the physical laws which govern the seasons. It is
only a matter of apprehension, a deliberate schooling of ourselves
into the necessary temperament."

"Then all these people in Bond Street--these crystal gazers and
fortune-tellers--" Lois began eagerly.

"They are charlatans, and stand in the way of progress," Saton
declared, fiercely. "They have not the faintest glimmering of the
truth, and they turn what should be the greatest of the sciences into
buffoonery. To the real student it is never possible to answer
questions to foretell specific things. On the other hand, it is as
sure as the coming of night itself that there are times when a person
who has studied