watched you
when you left the cylinder and when you shot the birds, and, seeing
your doom in the air, have been trying to communicate with you."

"What were the strange shadows and prismatic colours that kept passing
across our table?" asked Bearwarden.

"They were the obstructions and refractions of light caused by spirits
trying to take shape," replied the shade.

"Do you mind our asking you questions?" said Cortlandt.

"No," replied their visitor. "If I can, I will answer them."

"Then," said Cortlandt, "how is it that, of the several spirits that
tried to become embodied, we see but one, namely, you?"

"That," said the shade, "is because no natural law is broken. On earth
one man can learn a handicraft better in a few days than another in a
month, while some can solve with ease a mathematical problem that
others could never grasp. So it is here. Perhaps I was in a
favourable frame of mind on dying, for the so-called supernatural
always interested me on earth, or I had a natural aptitude for these
things; for soon after death I was able to affect the senses of the
friends I had left."

"Are we to understand, then," asked Cortlandt, "that the reason more of
our departed do not reappear to us is because they cannot?"

"Precisely," replied the shade. "But though the percentage of those
that can return and reappear on earth is small, their number is fairly
large. History has many cases. We know that the prophet Samuel raised
the witch of Endor at the behest of Saul; that Moses and Elias became
visible in the transfiguration; and that after his crucifixion and
burial Christ returned to his disciples, and was seen and heard by many
others."

"How," asked Bearwarden deferentially, "do you occupy your time?"

"Time," replied the spirit, "has not the same significance to us that
it has to you. You know that while the earth rotates in twenty-four
hours, this planet takes but about ten; and the sun turns on its own
axis but once in a terrestrial month; while the years of the planets
vary from less than three months for Mercury to Neptune's one hundred
and sixty-four years. Being insensible to heat and cold, darkness and
light, we have no more changing seasons, neither is there any night.
When a man dies," he continued with solemnity, "he comes at once into
the enjoyment of senses vastly keener than any be possessed before.
Our eyes--if such they can be called--are both microscopes and
telescopes, the change