mentation which gave promise of attracting more than a spirit
audience, when the materialized spirit of "Mrs. Deck's first man," or
whatever owned the voice, laid a heavy hand upon the trembling woman,
sepulchrally warned her to desist from her outcries, and then read her
such a lecture from the Other World as she had never transmitted in her
most effective "seances;" after which she was ordered, on pain of
instant death, to leave Mrs. Deck's and Terre Haute as soon as morning
should come, and a pledge being secured from her to the effect that she
would, and that she would under no circumstances leave the room for the
night, the spirit--which had very much the appearance of Detective
Pinkham, the commercial traveller from Cincinnati--left the room by the
door in a twinkling, very like a mortal, and still very like a mortal,
quietly stole upstairs and helped extricate Miss Ruggles from her gloomy
position, where she had done "utility" business as a groaning garret
ghost.

All that dreary night the wicked woman moaned and wept for day. Her
coward heart shrank from the evil she knew she deserved. The storm never
ceased, but rose and fell as if keeping pace with her terrors, and the
old place furnished her crazed imagination untold horrors.

At last the dawn came, but she had found no moment's sleep, and before
the household was astir the wretched woman crept out upon the street,
and plodding through the swollen drifts, followed by a very pleasant
appearing commercial traveller from Chicago, she staggered to the
station, and was rapidly borne away from her sympathizing friends
towards the east.

Being apprised by telegraph of Pinkham's rather strange method of giving
her an impulse in the direction of Rochester, I at once proceeded to
that city with Superintendent Bangs, anticipating her arrival there
shortly after our own; but was again disappointed, the adventuress
having doubled on the detective, and so successfully avoided him, that
the third day after leaving the Hoosier City he arrived in Rochester
with a long face and in an extremely befogged condition.

After having directed Mr. Bangs and Pinkham to remain and watch every
incoming train, one stormy evening, as I was about returning to New
York, by the merest chance I espied the woman cautiously emerging from
the Arcade, and following her I soon housed her in the apartments of an
old mediumistic hag on State street. Calling a carriage I was rapidly
driven to the