y made their way to the farther end of the room, a little apart from
a group of dark figures who talked together in whispers. Miss Fleming
noticed a nervous trepidation in the manner of both men, and instantly
became grave, as though she too were more deeply moved than she cared to
show.

The whispers ceased, and the silence was growing oppressive when steps
were heard upon the stairs.

"Hoh!" puffed the judge. "Here is Laidley at last."

CHAPTER II.

It was not Laidley who entered, but Mrs. Combe, then the most-famous
clairvoyant in the United States. According to statements of men both
shrewd and honest she had lately succeeded in bringing the dead back to
them in actual bodily presence. The voice was heard, then the spirit
slowly grew into matter beside them. They could feel and see its warm
flesh, its hair and clothing, and even while they held it it melted
again into the impalpable air, and was gone. The account was attested by
persons of such integrity and prominence as to command attention from
scientific men. They knew, of course, that it was a trick, but the trick
must be so well managed as to be worth the trouble of exposure. Hence,
Mrs. Combe upon her entrance was received with silent, keen attention.

She was a tall pillar-like woman, with some heavy drapery of black
velvet or cloth about her: there were massive coils of coarse black
hair, dead narrow eyes of the same color, a closely-shut jaw: no point
of light in the figure, but a rope of unburnished gold about her neck.
She stood with her hands dropped at her sides, immovable, while her
husband, a greasy little manikin with a Jewish face, turned on the light
and waved the attention of the audience to her: "This is Miriam Combe,
the first person since the Witch of Endor who has succeeded in
materializing the shpirits of the dead. Our meeting here to-day is under
peculiar shircumstances. A zhentleman unknown to me and Mrs. Combe, but
who, I am told, is near death, desires to recall the shpirit of a dead
friend. Zhentlemans will reconize the fact that the thing we propose to
do depends upon the states of minds and matters about us. If these
elements are disturbed by unbelief or by too much light or noise when
the soul shtruggling to return wants silence and darkness, why--it
cannot make for itself a body--dat's all."

"You compel belief, in a word, before you prove to us that we ought to
believe," said a professor from a Baptist college in New Jersey