of incredulity,
and he went on, quickly: "Even if I admitted the fact of direct
writing or the movement of the horn, I should not by any means be
driven to accept your spirit-hypothesis. There are men, and very great
investigators, who would say that your daughter's trances and all
phenomena connected therewith were pathologic, explainable on the
grounds of some obscure neural derangement. I do not say this is the
case, but I do say that if she persists in these practices she will
lose control of her mental faculties. I have had a consultation to-day
with Dr. Tolman, a man who makes a specialty of such cases, and when I
had laid the whole matter before him, he and Dr. Weissmann both
advised the immediate stopping of these trances."

"We can't do that. They come from the other side. My father induces
the trance, and it is entirely in his hands."

He fixed a keen look upon her. "Did it ever occur to you that the
words of your 'guides' were, in reality, but a reflex of the wishes of
Pratt or Clarke?"

"How could that be when they came to me long before I even knew
Anthony?"

"But was not the advice of a different quality at that time? Maybe
your father yields to the will of living people when they are strong
enough."

"Oh no, quite the contrary. He opposes Mr. Clarke often. Sometimes he
opposes us all."

"I am perfectly sure that the voices that spoke to us last night were
a subtle delusion, an emanation from our own bodies--or the work of a
joker. My reason repels them as spirits."

She smiled a little. "I think you scientific people go a long way
round to explain a very simple thing. I've read some of the
explanations of the way in which you think these phenomena come, but
they are harder to understand than the thing itself. My father, my
husband, and my little son are alive. I know that. No one can destroy
that faith in me."

"I do not wish to destroy that faith--only so far as it seems to
threaten your daughter."

"I am perfectly sure they know better what we should do than any one
on the earth-plane. I cannot see why you people oppose the idea of the
spirit-world when it is so beautiful and could fill the world with
hope. The Bible teaches it when you read it right. It is full of
references to spirits. Did not Christ rise from the dead and manifest
to His disciples?"

"And did He not cast out devils?"

She was momentarily at a loss, but soon recovered. "But if you admit
there are _evil_ spirits--"