a sneaking desire to find out some more from
Planchette," Lute confessed. "The board is still down in the dining
room. We could try it now, you and I, and no one would know."

Chris caught her hand, crying: "Come on! It will be a lark."

Hand in hand they ran down the path to the tree-pillared room.

"The camp is deserted," Lute said, as she placed Planchette on the
table. "Mrs. Grantly and Aunt Mildred are lying down, and Mr. Barton has
gone off with Uncle Robert. There is nobody to disturb us." She placed
her hand on the board. "Now begin."

For a few minutes nothing happened. Chris started to speak, but she
hushed him to silence. The preliminary twitchings had appeared in her
hand and arm. Then the pencil began to write. They read the message,
word by word, as it was written:

There is wisdom greater than the wisdom of reason. Love proceeds not out
of the dry-as-dust way of the mind. Love is of the heart, and is
beyond all reason, and logic, and philosophy. Trust your own heart,
my daughter. And if your heart bids you have faith in your lover, then
laugh at the mind and its cold wisdom, and obey your heart, and have
faith in your lover.--Martha.

"But that whole message is the dictate of your own heart," Chris
cried. "Don't you see, Lute? The thought is your very own, and your
subconscious mind has expressed it there on the paper."

"But there is one thing I don't see," she objected.

"And that?"

"Is the handwriting. Look at it. It does not resemble mine at all. It
is mincing, it is old-fashioned, it is the old-fashioned feminine of a
generation ago."

"But you don't mean to tell me that you really believe that this is a
message from the dead?" he interrupted.

"I don't know, Chris," she wavered. "I am sure I don't know."

"It is absurd!" he cried. "These are cobwebs of fancy. When one dies, he
is dead. He is dust. He goes to the worms, as Martin says. The dead? I
laugh at the dead. They do not exist. They are not. I defy the powers of
the grave, the men dead and dust and gone!

"And what have you to say to that?" he challenged, placing his hand on
Planchette.

On the instant his hand began to write. Both were startled by the
suddenness of it. The message was brief:

BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE!

He was distinctly sobered, but he laughed. "It is like a miracle play.
Death we have, speaking to us from the grave. But Good Deeds, where art
thou? And Kindred? and Joy? and Household Goods? and Friendship?