ying to Mrs. Lambert. "I do not care for a return of
my dead, madam; what I wish your daughter to do is quite simple. I
would like her to move a particle of matter from A to B, without a
known push or a pull--that is to say, by a power not known to
science--as Zoellner claimed Slade was able to do for him."

"She can do it," cried Clarke. "She can move a chair from A to B
without bringing to bear any of the known forces. She can suspend the
law of gravity. She can make a closed piano play, and she can read
sealed letters in an ebony box tightly closed and locked."

"You claim too much, my friend," replied Weissmann, ironically. "We
shall be satisfied with much less. If she will change one
one-hundredth part of a grain from one scale to another, under my
conditions, I will be satisfied. The most wonderful phenomena taking
place in the dark have no value to me."

Mrs. Lambert interposed. "Please don't argue--it prevents the coming
of the spirits."

Both men felt rebuked and the group again settled into silence.
Suddenly, Kate began to laugh, "Isn't it childish? Really, Morton, if
our friends could see us sitting around here in the dark, as we are
now, they would roar. Why should it all be so silly, Mr. Clarke?"

"It is _not_ silly if we take the right view. We must sit together in
order to get into harmony. We further these conditions by sitting in
subdued light with fingers touching. Song adds still more to this
concert of thought. Nothing is really silly or prosaic--all depends
upon the minds of those--"

He was in the midst of an elaborate defence of spirit methods when
Viola's hand began to leap as if struggling to be free. She moaned and
sighed and writhed so powerfully that her chair creaked. "Oh, dear!
Oh, dear!" she cried, gaspingly.

"Is she trying to free her hands?" Morton asked himself, with roused
suspicion. "Is this a ruse to cover some trick?"

Mrs. Lambert spoke quietly. "She is going! Sing something, Anthony."

Clarke began to hum a monotonous tune, while Morton, bending towards
the girl, listened to her gurgling moans with growing heartache. "She
seems in great pain, Mrs. Lambert. Don't you think we'd better release
her? I do not care to purchase sensation so clearly at her expense."

"Don't be alarmed, she always seems to suffer that way when some great
manifestation is about to take place."

The poor girl's outcries so nearly resembled those of a death struggle
that Kate at last rose. "Tur