, smiling
blandly down upon him. "Scientifically--"

"I knows noting of scientifics. I knows dat my wife hash de power to
ashist de souls to clode demselves wid matter. I don't pretend to
explain where she got dat power, I don't know what ish dat power: I only
know she hash it. If zhentlemans will submit to the conditions, they
shall zhoodge for demselves."

"Now, the ignorance of this man impresses me favorably," said the
professor to his friends. "He is evidently incapable of inventing a
successful trick even of conjuring. If any great unknown force of Nature
has chosen him or his wife as tools, we should not despise the
manifestation because the tools are very gross matter. They are the
steel wire charged with the lightning, perhaps."

Dr. Dehr came forward and touched the motionless woman, shaking his head
solemnly: "She is highly charged with electricity now, sir. The air is
vital, as I might say, with spiritual presences. I have no doubt,
gentlemen, before we part, that we shall see one of the most remarkable
phenomena of the nineteenth century."

"How well she poses!" whispered Miss Fleming to the judge. "But the
stage-properties are bad: the velvet is cotton, and the gold
brass-gilt."

"Now, to me," said the judge emphatically, "there is a dreadful reality,
a dead look, in her face. What Poe would have made of this scene! There
was a man who could grapple with these supreme mysteries! No! that woman
undoubtedly has learned the secret of life and of death. She can afford
to be passive." The judge's very whisper was judicial, though pulpy.

It was not possible that the woman should have heard them, yet a moment
after she lifted her eyes and motioned slowly toward them.

"God bless my soul, ma'am! You don't want me!" cried the judge.

Waring half rose, laughing, but with cold chills down his backbone, and
then dropped into his seat, relieved: "You are the chosen victim, Miss
Fleming."

Cornelia went up to the medium. She was confident the whole affair was a
vulgar trick, but there was a stricture at her heart as if an iron hand
had been laid upon it. The energy went out of her step, the blood from
her face.

The woman laid her hand on her arm. "I need you," she said in a deep
voice. "You have great magnetic force: you can aid this soul to return
to life if you will. Sit there." She placed both her hands lightly on
Cornelia's forehead. Miss Fleming dropped into the seat: she could not
have done otherwis