ence: "I was sound asleep last night when I
was awakened by the clock's striking two. It sounded so loud that I
thought somebody had called to me. I sat up in bed and said, 'What is
it?' and then I felt a great longing to have planchette write. I got
out of bed in my nightgown and sat down in the dark at the table.
Planchette wrote so fast that I could hardly keep up with it. And when
it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother's
very handwriting"--fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia
to see. The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the
writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly
legible, and resembling anything rather than her mother's handwriting.

"Read it--read it--it is too beautiful!" quivered the other, "and then
let me show it to your father. It was meant for him--"

Sylvia shook like a roughly plucked fiddle-string. She seized the
wrinkled old hand fiercely. "Cousin Parnelia, I forbid you going
anywhere near my father! You know as well as I do how intensely he
has always detested spiritualism. To see you might be the thing that
would--"

The old woman broke in, protesting, her hat falling to one side, her
brown false front sliding with it and showing the thin, gray hairs
beneath. "But, Sylvia, this is the very thing that would save
him--such a beautiful, beautiful message from your mother,--_see_! In
her own handwriting!"

Sylvia snatched the sheet of yellow paper. "_That's_ not my mother's
handwriting! Do you think I am as crazy as _you_ are!" She tore the
paper into shreds and scattered them from her, feeling a relief in the
violence of her action. The next moment she remembered how patient her
mother had always been with her daft kinswoman and seeing tears in the
blurred old eyes, went to put placating arms about the other's neck.
"Never mind, Cousin Parnelia," she said with a vague kindness, "I know
you mean to do what's right--only we don't believe as you do, and
Father _must_ not be excited!" She turned sick as she spoke and shrank
away from the hedge, carrying her small old cousin with her. Above the
hedge appeared her father's gray face and burning eyes.

He was not looking at her, but at Cousin Parnelia, who now sprang
forward, crying that she had had a beautiful, beautiful message from
Cousin Barbara. "_It_ came last night at two o'clock ... just after
the clock struck two--"

Professor Marshall looked quickly at his da