here is no
record. It was presumed that he was still praying.

The stillness was now absolute.

"We must wait in perfect silence," whispered Mr. Snoop from the extreme
tips of his lips.

Everybody sat in strained intensity, silent, looking towards the vague
outline of the sideboard.

The minutes passed. No one moved. All were spellbound in expectancy.

Still the minutes passed. The taper had flickered down till the great
room was almost in darkness.

Could it be that by some neglect in the preparations, the substitution
perhaps of the wrong brandy, the astralization could not be effected?

But no.

Quite suddenly, it seemed, everybody in the darkened room was aware of
a _presence_. That was the word as afterwards repeated in a hundred
confidential discussions. A _presence_. One couldn't call it a body. It
wasn't. It was a figure, an astral form, a presence.

"Buddha!" they gasped as they looked at it.

Just how the figure entered the room, the spectators could never
afterwards agree. Some thought it appeared through the wall,
deliberately astralizing itself as it passed through the bricks. Others
seemed to have seen it pass in at the farther door of the room, as if
it had astralized itself at the foot of the stairs in the back of the
hall outside.

Be that as it may, there it stood before them, the astralized shape of
the Indian deity, so that to every lip there rose the half-articulated
word, "Buddha"; or at least to every lip except that of Mrs.
Rasselyer-Brown. From her there came no sound.

The figure as afterwards described was attired in a long _shirak_, such
as is worn by the Grand Llama of Tibet, and resembling, if the
comparison were not profane, a modern dressing-gown. The legs, if one
might so call them, of the apparition were enwrapped in loose
punjahamas, a word which is said to be the origin of the modern
pyjamas; while the feet, if they were feet, were encased in loose
slippers.

Buddha moved slowly across the room. Arrived at the sideboard the
astral figure paused, and even in the uncertain light Buddha was seen
to raise and drink the propitiatory offering. That much was perfectly
clear. Whether Buddha spoke or not is doubtful. Certain of the
spectators thought that he said, 'Must a fagotnit', which is
Hindustanee for "Blessings on this house." To Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown's
distracted mind it seemed as if Buddha said, "I must have forgotten it"
But this wild fancy she never breathed to a so