in the office window he broke
into the seance. When the boy and his girl were not holding down the
sofa at her father's home, or when there was no dance at the Imperial
Club hall, nor any other social diversion, David and Larmy and the
reporter would meet at the office and dive into things too deep for
Horatio's philosophy.

Their favourite theme was the immortality of the soul, and when they
were on this theme David would get nervous, pace up and down the office,
and finally throw himself on the lounge and begin to yawn. Whereupon a
control, or state of mind, or personality that called itself Fra
Guiseppi would rise to consciousness and dominate the boy. Larmy and the
reporter called it "father," and talked to it with considerable
jocularity, considering that the father claimed they were talking to a
ghost. It would do odd things for them; go into rooms where David had
never been: describe their furnishings and occupants accurately; read
the numbers on watches of prominent citizens, which the reporter would
verify the next day; and pretend to bring other departed spirits into
the room to discuss various matters. Larmy had a pleasant social chat
with Karl Marx, and had the spirits hunting all over the kingdom-come
for Tom Paine and Murat. But the messenger either could not find them,
or the line was busy with someone else, so these worthies never
appeared.

Still, this must be said of the "father," that it had a philosophy of
life, and a distinct personality far deeper and more charming and in
some way sweeter than David's; that it talked with an accent, which to
the hearers seemed Italian, and in a voice that certainly could not have
been the boy's by any trick of ventriloquism. One night in their talks
Larmy said:

"'Father,' you say you believe that the judgments of God are just--how
do you account for the sufferings, the heartaches, the sorrows, the
misery that come in the wake of those judgments? Here is a great railway
accident that strikes down twenty people, renders some cripples for
life, kills others. Here is a flood that sweeps away the property of
good men and bad men. Is that just? What compensation is there for it?"

The "father" put his chin in one hand and remained silent for a time, as
one deep in thought; then he replied:

"That is--what you call--life. That is what makes life, life; what
makes it different from the existence we know now. All your misfortunes,
your hardships, your joys, all your