word. There was, too, a
faint metallic clangor in the air. He knew that it came from the
surface-cars, yet he could not rid himself of the thought of iron
furnace-doors.

He had, of course, heard of the Meekers before. So had I, for that
matter. A crack-brained professor had written a laborious, fantastic
book about their mediumship and power of communication with the other
world. They sat together as a family: the elder Meekers; the wife's
sister; a boy, Albert, of fourteen; Ena, close to twenty; and Jannie, a
girl seventeen years old and the medium proper. Jannie's familiar spirit
was called Stepan. He had, it seemed, lived and died in the reign of
Peter the Great; yet he was still actual, but unmaterialized, and
extremely anxious to reassure every one through Jannie of the supernal
happiness of the beyond. What messages I read, glancing over hysterical
pages, gave me singularly little comfort, with the possible exception of
the statement that there were cigars; good cigars Stepan, or Jannie,
explained, such as on earth cost three for a quarter.

However, most of what McGeorge told me directly concerned Lizzie Tuoey.
The Meekers he couldn't see at all. They remained in an undiscovered
part of the house--there was a strong reek of frying onions from the
kitchen--and delegated the servant as their link with the curious or
respectful or impertinent world.

Lizzie admitted him to the parlor, where, she informed him, the sittings
took place. There wasn't much furniture beyond a plain, heavy table, an
array of stiff chairs thrust back against the walls, and on a mantel a
highly painted miniature Rock of Ages, with a white-clad figure clinging
to it, washed with a poisonous green wave, all inclosed in a glass bell.
At the rear was a heavy curtain that, he found, covered the entrance to
a smaller room.

Lizzie was a stout, cheerful person, with the ready sympathies and
superstitions of the primitive mind of the south of Ireland. She was in
a maze of excitement, and his difficulty was not to get her to talk, but
to arrest her incoherent flood of invocations, saints' names, and
credulity.

Her duties at the Meekers had been various; one of them was the playing
of mechanical music in the back room at certain opportune moments. She
said that Stepan particularly requested it; the low strains made it
easier for him to speak to the dear folks on this side. It couldn't
compare, though, Stepan had added, with the music beyond; a