h the smell of the kerosene-lamp and the perennial odor
of potatoes in the cellar under the low room where the companions
forgathered.

Toward the end of September Westover spent the night before he went back
to town with them. After a season with planchette, their host pushed
himself back with his knees from the table till his chair reared upon its
hind legs, and shoved his hat up from his forehead in token of
philosophical mood.

"I tell you, Jackson," he said, "you'd ought to get hold o' some them
occult devils out there, and squeeze their science out of 'em. Any
Buddhists in Egypt, Mr. Westover?"

"I don't think there are," said Westover. "Unless Jackson should come
across some wandering Hindu. Or he might push on, and come home by the
way of India."

"Do it, Jackson!" his friend conjured him. "May cost you something more,
but it 'll be worth the money. If it's true, what some them Blavetsky
fellers claim, you can visit us here in your astral body--git in with 'em
the right way. I should like to have you try it. What's the reason India
wouldn't be as good for him as Egypt, anyway?" Whitwell demanded of
Westover.

"I suppose the climate's rather too moist; the heat would be rather
trying to him there."

"That so?"

"And he's taken his ticket for Alexandria," Westover pursued.

"Well, I guess that's so." Whitwell tilted his backward sloping hat to
one side, so as to scratch the northeast corner of his bead thoughtfully.

"But as far as that is concerned," said Westover, "and the doctrine of
immortality generally is concerned, Jackson will have his hands full if
he studies the Egyptian monuments."

"What they got to do with it?"

"Everything. Egypt is the home of the belief in a future life; it was
carried from Egypt to Greece. He might come home by way of Athens."

"Why, man!" cried Whitwell. "Do you mean to say that them old Hebrew
saints, Joseph's brethren, that went down into Egypt after corn, didn't
know about immortality, and them Egyptian devils did?"

"There's very little proof in the Old Testament that the Israelites knew
of it."

Whitwell looked at Jackson. "That the idee you got?"

"I guess he's right," said Jackson. "There's something a little about it
in Job, and something in the Psalms: but not a great deal."

"And we got it from them Egyptian d----"

"I don't say that," Westover interposed. "But they had it before we had.
As we imagine it, we got it though Christianity."

Jombatee