ed. "Lute took our name.
She never saw him. He died when she was a few weeks old. He was my
brother."

"Remarkable, most remarkable." Mrs. Grantly was revolving the message
in her mind. "There were two attempts on Mr. Dunbar's life. The
subconscious mind cannot explain that, for none of us knew of the
accident to-day."

"I knew," Chris answered, "and it was I that operated Planchette. The
explanation is simple."

"But the handwriting," interposed Mr. Barton. "What you wrote and what
Mrs. Grantly wrote are identical."

Chris bent over and compared the handwriting.

"Besides," Mrs. Grantly cried, "Mr. Story recognizes the handwriting."

She looked at him for verification.

He nodded his head. "Yes, it is Dick's fist. I'll swear to that."

But to Lute had come a visioning. While the rest argued pro and con and
the air was filled with phrases,--"psychic phenomena," "self-hypnotism,"
"residuum of unexplained truth," and "spiritism,"--she was reviving
mentally the girlhood pictures she had conjured of this soldier-father
she had never seen. She possessed his sword, there were several
old-fashioned daguerreotypes, there was much that had been said of him,
stories told of him--and all this had constituted the material out of
which she had builded him in her childhood fancy.

"There is the possibility of one mind unconsciously suggesting to
another mind," Mrs. Grantly was saying; but through Lute's mind was
trooping her father on his great roan war-horse. Now he was leading
his men. She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the yelling,
Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned with one man
in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she
had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her
worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression--his bravery,
his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in
a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his
chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of
knighthood. And first, last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the
face of him the hot passion and quickness of deed that had earned for
him the name "Fighting Dick Curtis."

"Let me put it to the test," she heard Mrs. Grantly saying. "Let Miss
Story try Planchette. There may be a further message."

"No, no, I beg of you," Aunt Mildred interposed. "It is too uncanny.
It surely is wrong to ta