w," he said. "I'm going to give you one more chance at
the theory you were wise enough to form and are not wise enough to
practise."

Dr. McPherson entered.

"I thought I'd just drop in for a minute before bedtime," said he, "to
see how Willem----"

"Oh, Doctor!" cried Mrs. Batholommey. "This is providential. I was just
coming to get you. Here's Willem. We found he'd gotten out of bed and
wandered down here. He is worse. Much worse. He's quite delirious."

"H'm!" commented Dr. McPherson, touching the child's face and then
laying a finger on the fast, light pulse. "He doesn't look it. He has a
slight fever again, but----"

"Oh, he said old Mr. Grimm was here!" bleated Mrs. Batholommey. "Here in
this room with him."

"What?" gasped Kathrien.

But the doctor seemed to regard the statement as the most natural thing
imaginable.

"In this room?" he repeated in a matter of fact tone. "Well, very
possibly he is. There's nothing so remarkable about that, is there?"

"Nothing _remarkable_?" squealed Mrs. Batholommey; then, bridling, she
scoffed: "Oh, of course. I forgot. You believe in----"

"In fact," pursued McPherson, getting under weigh with his pet idea,
"you'll remember, both of you, that I told you he and I made a compact
to----"

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Batholommey with a shudder. "That absurd, horrible
'compact' you told us about! It was positively blasphemous!"

But McPherson was looking speculatively down at Willem, and did not
accept nor even hear the challenge to combat.

"I've sometimes had the idea," said he, "that the boy was a 'sensitive.'
And this evening, I've been wondering----"

"No, you haven't, Andrew," denied Peter Grimm. "It's _I_ who have been
doing the 'wondering'; through that Scotch brain of yours. _I'm_ making
use of that Spiritualistic hobby of yours because you're too dense to
hear me except through some rarer mortal's voice."

"----Wondering," continued the doctor, "whether--perhaps----"

"Yes," declared Peter Grimm, as McPherson hesitated, "the boy is a
'sensitive,' as you call it."

"I really believe," declared McPherson, his last doubts vanishing, "that
Willem _is_ a 'sensitive.' I'm certain of it. And----"

"A 'sensitive'?" queried Kathrien. "What's that?"

"Well," reflected the doctor, "it is rather hard to define in simple
language. A 'sensitive' is what is sometimes known as a 'medium.' A
human organism so constructed that it can be 'informed,' or 'controlled'
(as the phra