hear. He sought out and entertained scores
of mediums, psychics, sensitives, inspiritual speakers, and natural
healers--all were welcome at his hearth. He might have been called,
and was called, "the prey of harpies," but, as his interests now were
in these matters, and as he had the means wherewithal to amuse
himself, surely he was not a loser. True, he was many times deceived
by false prophets and wronged by fraudulent seers, but still he
enjoyed the exquisite solace which the voice of his wife unfailingly
brought when the conditions were favorable. He was no longer hopeless;
on the contrary, he was reanimated, made over in the faith of the
spirit-world. The daughters came less often to speak to him, but when
they did come they made his dark, cold heart glow with their gay
words. At times it seemed that he could reach out his hands and touch
their soft cheeks, so palpable were they, so intimate and familiar
were their voices.

Gradually a part of his old-time business shrewdness came to his aid
in these intangible matters, and he began to distinguish and to cast
out the base and parasitic prestidigitators who infested his house. He
grew discerning, and was able to weed the tares from the wheat, and
with this discernment came the conviction that it was his duty to
violently expose those who sought to cheat him. He became a terror to
the fraudulent, and by his vigorous denouncement of this and that
performer raised storms of opposition; for it seemed that no
trickster, no matter how base, was without a following. His purposes
clarified. Aided by cunning counsel, he began to conceive of himself
as one called to a great mission; and, resigned to his lot, he set
himself to the work of furthering in every possible way the reign of
the spirit-world.

It was into the hands of this shattered yet still powerful man that
Viola Lambert had been persuaded to deliver herself, and Simeon,
convinced of her powers by experiment, and charmed by her girlish
grace and dignity, had pushed all other keepers of the door of silence
from his house, thereby arousing a tempest of denunciation; for these
sibyls gave up the luxury of his table, the munificence of his purse,
only after persuasion, and in bitterness and wrath.

Viola's meeting with Pratt was brought about by Clarke, who was aware
through the special organs of the faith that the great merchant and
promoter was not merely insatiable in his thirst for new sources of
solace, but ex