lf silently away.

Kate, with an air of saying, "Now that we are alone, let's know your
real mind," faced her brother with eyes of wonder. "Morton, what do
you honestly think of it? Viola had nothing to do with it, did she?"

"No; but are you absolutely sure Clarke did not get loose and do
things?"

"Mort, I was never more alert in my life, and I _know_ he didn't move
out of his chair."

"But think what it involves!"

"I don't care what it involves. So far as the senses of touch and
hearing go, Clarke remained seated every minute of the time, and I
certainly held both his and Mrs. Lambert's hands the whole time while
the books were being thrown."

"Well, there you are. Somebody did it." He shrugged his shoulders in
an unwonted irritation.

"Why not say the spirits did it all?"

"Because that is unthinkable."

"Sir William Crookes and Dr. Zoellner, you say, believed in these
disembodied intelligences--"

"Yes, but they belong to what Haeckel calls the imaginative
scientists."

"You needn't quote Haeckel to me, Morton. If I believed what he
preaches I would take myself and my children out of the world. I don't
see how a man can look a child in the face and say such things. I
can't read any of your scientific friends straight along. Their jargon
is worse than anything, but I pick out enough to know that they don't
believe in anything they can't see, and they won't go out of their way
to see things. Do you suppose I'm going to believe that Robbie is
nothing but a little animal, and that if he should die his soul would
disappear like a vapor?"

"I can only repeat that the converse is unthinkable. There is no room
in my philosophy for the re-entrance of the dead."

"Why not? It's all very simple. We're creatures of our surroundings,
aren't we? Now, sitting there in the dark to-night, it seemed to me
that the people we think of as dead were all about me. It scared me at
first; but, really, isn't it the most comforting faith in the world?
I've always liked the idea of the Indian's happy 'hunting-grounds'--and
this is something like it."

He smiled shrewdly. "That performance to-night and this conversation
would make a pretty story to lay before the president of Corlear--now
wouldn't it?"

"How do you suppose he will take your going into this investigation?"

"I don't know, but I think he'll 'fire' me instanter."

"Well, let him try it! He wouldn't _dare_--"

"Oh yes, he would, if he thought I was hurtin