ed to yield a penny to the injured client, Kerner was so
impressed by this exhibition of supernatural power that, in order to
study his patient more closely, he had her removed from her lodgings to
his own house. Thither also, as soon as he learned that their presence
seemed to increase her susceptibility to the occult influences by which
she was surrounded, he brought her sister and the maid servant of the
dancing candle episode.

Then ensued greater marvels than had ever bewitched the family at
Oberstenfeld. Invisible hands threw articles of furniture at the
enthusiastic doctor and his friends; ghostly fingers sprinkled lime and
gravel on the flooring of his halls and rooms; spirit knuckles beat
lively tattoos on walls, tables, chairs, and bedsteads. And all the
while ghosts with criminal pasts flocked in and out, seeking consolation
and advice. Only once or twice, however, did the physician himself see
anything even remotely resembling a ghost. On one occasion a cloudy
shape floated past his window; and on another he saw at Frederica's
bedside a pillar of vapor, which she afterward told him was the specter
of a tall old man who had visited her twice before.

But if he neither saw the ghosts nor heard them speak, it was
sufficiently demonstrated to him that they were really in evidence. The
knocking, furniture throwing, and gravel sprinkling were the least of
the wonders of which it was permitted him to be a witness. Once, when
Frederica was taking an afternoon nap, a spirit that was evidently
solicitous for her comfort drew off her boots, and in his presence
carried them across the room to where her sister was standing by a
window. Again at midnight, after a preliminary knocking on the walls, he
observed another spirit, or possibly the same, open a book she had been
reading which was lying on her bed.

Most marvelous of all, when her father died she herself enacted the role
of ghost, the news of his death being conveyed to her supernaturally and
her cry of anguish being supernaturally conveyed back to the room where
his corpse lay, in Oberstenfeld, and where it was distinctly heard by
the physician who had attended him in his last moments. After this
crowning piece of testimony the good Kerner felt that no doubt of her
unheard of powers could remain in the most skeptical mind.

Judge, then, of his dismay and grief when he saw her visibly fading
away, daily growing more ethereal of form and feature, more weak in bo