mper with the dead. Besides, I am nervous. Or,
better, let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your experiments.
That will be the best way, and you can tell me in the morning." Mingled
with the "Good-nights," were half-hearted protests from Mrs. Grantly, as
Aunt Mildred withdrew.

"Robert can return," she called back, "as soon as he has seen me to my
tent."

"It would be a shame to give it up now," Mrs. Grantly said. "There is no
telling what we are on the verge of. Won't you try it, Miss Story?"

Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious
of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural. She
was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said,
was mediaeval. Yet she could not shake off the instinctive fear that
arose in her--man's inheritance from the wild and howling ages when
his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid of the dark and personified the
elements into things of fear.

But as the mysterious influence seized her hand and sent it meriting
across the paper, all the unusual passed out of the situation and she
was unaware of more than a feeble curiosity. For she was intent on
another visioning--this time of her mother, who was also unremembered
in the flesh. Not sharp and vivid like that of her father, but dim and
nebulous was the picture she shaped of her mother--a saint's head in an
aureole of sweetness and goodness and meekness, and withal, shot
through with a hint of reposeful determination, of will, stubborn and
unobtrusive, that in life had expressed itself mainly in resignation.

Lute's hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly was already reading the
message that had been written.

"It is a different handwriting," she said. "A woman's hand. 'Martha,' it
is signed. Who is Martha?"

Lute was not surprised. "It is my mother," she said simply. "What does
she say?"

She had not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but the keen edge of her
vitality had been blunted, and she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing
lassitude. And while the message was being read, in her eyes persisted
the vision of her mother.

"Dear child," Mrs. Grantly read, "do not mind him. He was ever quick of
speech and rash. Be no niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you.
To deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can do no wrong. Obey
worldly considerations, obey pride, obey those that prompt you against
your heart's prompting, and you do sin. Do not mind you