nt attending even an imaginary conversation with the
dead I can easily believe, and I do not care for exposing myself to it."

"Nor I," said Brandon; "as Miss Alice says, I have got my own idea of
heaven, and I am satisfied with it. I think we are not intended to know
all the particulars."

Why did Brandon, in giving no original opinion of his own (poor fellow,
he was incapable of that), give Elsie's argument in preference to hers?
Miss Phillips felt still more inclined to be agreeable to Mr. Hogarth
from this slight to herself, and began to think that an inquiring
spirit, in a man at least, was more admirable than Brandon's lazy
satisfaction with things as they are at present.

Mr. Dempster's eagerness after a possible convert was only to be
satisfied by Francis making an appointment with him to attend a seance
on the following evening in his own house. And then the conversation
changed to politics--English, foreign, and colonial--in which Francis
and his cousins were much interested.

Mr. Dempster was rather an elderly man, who had lost his wife and all
his family, with the exception of one daughter, who was married and
settled in South Australia. Though so enthusiastic a believer in
spiritualism, he was a very shrewd and well-informed man in mundane
matters. He had been a very old colonist on the Adelaide side; and,
having been a townsman, had taken a more active part in politics than
the Victorian squatters, Phillips and Brandon. They were all in the
full tide of talk about the advantages and disadvantages of giving to
their infant States constitutional government, and allowing each colony
to frame its constitution for itself. The good and evil effects of
manhood suffrage and vote by ballot Francis for the first time heard
discussed by people who had lived under these systems, and English,
French, and American blunders in the science of politics looked at from
a new and independent point of view. At what Jane and Elsie considered
the most interesting part of the conversation, Mrs. Phillips and
Harriett, who cared for none of these subjects, gave the signal for the
ladies to withdraw, so they had to leave with them.

Jane saw the children to bed, and Elsie got on with Mrs. Phillips's
bonnet, while the gentlemen remained in the dining room; but both
reappeared in the drawing-room by the time they came upstairs. Elsie
did not like to disappoint any one, and the idea struck her that if she
got up very early in the