can believe it." Kate's eyes dwelt admiringly on the girl.

"My husband and I were good Presbyterians, and I had never given much
thought to spirits or spiritualism, but after our little boy died
Robert began to study up, and every time we went to the city he'd go
to see a psychic, and that troubled me. As a good church-member I
thought he ought not to do it, and so one day I said, 'Robert, I think
you ought to tell Mr. McLane'--that was our minister--'what you are
doing. It isn't right to visit mediums and go to church, too--one or
the other ought to be given up.' He said--I remember his exact words:
'I can't live without these messages of comfort from my boy. They say
he is going to manifest himself soon--here in our own home.' I
remember that was his exact expression, for I wondered what it was to
manifest. That very night things began."

Kate's eyes snapped. "What things?"

"Well, Waltie had a little chair that he liked--a little reed
rocking-chair--and my husband always kept this chair close by where he
sat reading. That night I saw the chair begin to rock all by
itself--and yet, some way, it didn't scare me. 'Robert, did you move
Waltie's chair?' I asked. 'No,' he said. 'Why?' 'Because it rocked.'
Robert threw down his book and looked at the chair. 'Viola must have
moved it,' he said. 'Viola was in her own little chair on the other
side of the table,' I said. 'It must have been the cat, then.'

"And then, just while we both looked at it, it began to move again
exactly as if Waltie were in it. It creaked, too, as it used to when
he rocked."

"I should have been frightened stiff," exclaimed Kate, whose eyes were
beginning to widen.

"Nothing that has happened since has given me such a turn. Robert
jumped up and felt all about the chair, sure that Viola had tied a
string to it--and still she was no child for tricks. Then Robert bent
right down over the chair, and it stopped for a moment, and then slid
backward under the table, just as our own boy used to do. He loved to
play tent. Robert looked up at me as white as the dead. 'It is Waltie,
mother; he has come back to us,' he said, and I believed it, too."

In spite of herself, Kate shivered with a keen, complete comprehension
of the thrilling joy and terror of that moment, but Viola sat
listlessly waiting the end of her mother's explanation. Plainly, it
was all a wearisome story to her.

Mrs. Lambert went on: "After that he came every night, and soon the
ta