!" he answered. "I look in a
glass ball--so; and if de spirit helps me I can see clear as a picture
far under de ground, far, far away over de sea. It's de Lord's truth,
sar--Blessed be His Name!"

I asked him whether he would look into his crystal for me. With a burst
of profanity, as unexpected as it was vivid, he cursed "dem boys" that
had stolen from him a priceless crystal which once had belonged to his
old royal mother, who, before him, had had the same gift of the spirit.
But, he added--turning to a table by his side, and lifting from it a
large cut-glass decanter of considerable capacity, though at present
void of contents--that he had found that gazing into the large glass
ball of its stopper produced almost equally good results at times.

He said this with perfect solemnity, though, as he placed the decanter
on top of his Bible in front of him, I observed, with an inner smile,
that he tilted it slightly on one side, as though remarking, strictly to
himself, that, save for a drain of dark-coloured liquid in one corner,
it was painfully empty.

Then, with a sigh, he applied himself to his business of seer. First, he
asked me to be kind enough to shut the door.

We had to be very quiet, he declared; the spirit could work only in deep
silence. And he asked me to be kind enough to close my eyes. Then I
heard his voice muttering, in a strange tongue, a queer dark gobbling
kind of words, which may have been ancient African spell-words, or sheer
gibberish such as magicians in all times and places have employed to
mystify their consultants.

I looked at him through the corner of my eye--as, doubtless, he had
anticipated, for he was glaring with an air of inspired abstraction into
the ball of the decanter stopper. So we sat silent for, I suppose, some
ten minutes. Then I heard him give another deep sigh. Opening my eyes, I
saw him slowly shaking his head.

"De spirits don't seem communicable dis afternoon," he muttered, once
more tilting the decanter slightly on one side and observing it drearily
as before.

I had been rather slow, indeed, in taking the hint, but I determined to
take it, and see what would happen.

"Do you think, Your Majesty," I asked, with as serious a face as I
could assume, "the spirits might work better--if the decanter were to be
filled?"

The old man looked at me a little cautiously, as though wondering how to
take me. I tried to keep grave, but I couldn't quite suppress a twinkle;
ca