torment and alarm them by the weird actions
of the preceding months. On the contrary, they found her healthy and
normal in mind and body, completely cured, as a result, the Roffs
emphatically declared, of the intervention of the spirit of their
beloved daughter.

Needless to say, the people of Watseka and the surrounding country had
watched with breathless interest the progress of this curious affair;
but it was not until three months after the "possession" had ended that
the public at large obtained any knowledge of it. The first intimation,
outside of unnoticed reports in local newspapers, came through the
medium of two articles contributed by Dr. Stevens to the August 3 and
10, 1878, issues of _The Religio-Philosophical Journal_, one of the
leading spiritist organs of the United States. Traversing the case in
the fullest detail, and emphasizing the fact that up to the moment of
writing the principal actor had had no return of the ills from which she
had previously suffered, Dr. Stevens gave it as his unqualified
conviction that the spirit of Mary Roff had actually revisited earth in
the person of Lurancy Vennum, and had been the instrument of her cure.
This view naturally commended itself to spiritists, but by the
unbelieving it was vigorously combatted, not a few insinuating or openly
alleging that Dr. Stevens's narrative was a work of fiction. The
veracity of the Roffs was also attacked. "Can the truthfulness of the
narrative," one skeptical inquirer wrote Mr. Roff, "be substantiated
outside of yourself and those immediately interested? Can it be shown
that there was no collusion between the parties?" And another asked him,
"Is it a fact, or is it a story made up to see how cunning a tale one
can tell?"

Waxing indignant, Mr. Roff wrote a long letter to _The
Religio-Philosophical Journal_ denouncing the imputation of fraud,
giving the names of a number of men who would vouch for his integrity,
and concluding with the statement: "I am now sixty years old; have
resided in Iroquois county thirty years; and would not now sacrifice
what reputation I may have by being party to the publication of such a
narrative, if it was not perfectly true."

Following this there appeared in _The Religio-Philosophical Journal_
several letters from well-known Illinois professional men warmly
indorsing Mr. Roff's character, and an announcement to the effect that
the editor, Colonel J. C. Bundy, himself of undoubted honesty, "has
enti