met, necessitating many more experiments. Thus it came about that
through most of the short hours of winter daylight Morris and Stella
found themselves at their respective positions, corresponding, or trying
to correspond, through the aerophones. If the weather was very bad,
or very cold, Morris went to the dead Church, otherwise that post was
allotted to Stella, both because it was more convenient that Morris
should stay in his laboratory, and by her own choice.

Two principal reasons caused her to prefer to pass as much of her time
as was possible in this desolate and unvisited spot. First, because Mr.
Layard was less likely to find her when he called, and secondly, that
for her it had a strange fascination. Indeed, she loved the place,
clothed as it was with a thousand memories of those who had been human
like herself, but now--were not. She would read the inscriptions upon
the chancel stones and study the coats-of-arms and names of those
departed, trying to give to each lost man and woman a shape and
character, till at length she knew all the monuments by appearance as
well as by the names inscribed upon them.

One of these dead, oddly enough, had been named Stella Ethel Smythe,
daughter of Sir Thomas Smythe, whose family lived at the old hall now
in the possession of the Layards. This Stella had died at the age of
twenty-five in the year 1741, and her tombstone recorded that in mind
she was clean and sweet, and in body beautiful. Also at the foot of it
was a doggerel couplet, written probably by her bereaved father, which
ran:

"Though here my Star seems set,
I know 'twill light me yet."

Stella, the live Stella, thought these simple words very touching, and
pointed them out to Morris. He agreed with her, and tried in the records
of the parish and elsewhere to discover some details about the dead
girl's life, but quite without avail.

"That's all that's left," he said one day, nodding his head at the
tombstone. "The star is quite set."

"'I know 'twill light me yet,'" murmured his companion, as she turned
away to the work in hand. "Sometimes," she went on, "as I sit here at
dusk listening to all the strange sounds which come from that receiver,
I fancy that I can hear Stella and her poor father talking while they
watch me; only I cannot understand their language."

"Ah!" said Morris, "if that were right we should have found a means of
communication from the dead and with the unseen world at large