fumbling sound began in the middle
of the table, and the pencil was twice lifted and dropped. Following
this the leaves of the writing-pad rustled as though being thumbed by
boyish hands.

Kate shivered and cried out: "This is uncanny! Morton, are you doing
this?"

"Certainly not," he replied, curtly.

"Do you feel any motion in your thread?" asked Weissmann, in a quiet
voice.

"None whatever," Morton replied.

"Then the psychic is not moving."

Again they sat in silence, and after some minutes the fumbling began
again and the horn was heard scraping slowly about, as if being lifted
with effort only to fall back with a clang.

"Is it too heavy?" asked Clarke.

Three sharp raps replied--an angry "yes"--and then, with a petulant
swing, the instrument apparently left the table and floated upon the
air. In deep amazement Morton listened for some movement, some sound
from Viola, but there was none, not a breath, not a rustle of motion
where she sat, and the silk thread was tight and calm. "She has
nothing to do with _that_," he said, beneath his breath.

Kate called excitedly, "Oh! It touched me."

"What touched you?" asked Weissmann.

"The horn."

"Did it bump you?"

"No, it seemed to float against me."

Morton spoke out sharply: "Where is Mr. Clarke?"

"Right here on my right," replied Kate.

"What idiotic business!" he exclaimed, mystified, nevertheless.

The horn dropped to the middle of the table, but was immediately swept
into the air again as if by a new and more vigorous hand, and a voice
heavily mixed with air, but a man's voice unmistakably, spoke directly
to Morton, sternly, contemptuously.

"We meet you on your own level. You asked for material tests, and now
conditions being as you have made them--proceed. What would you have
us do?"

"Who are you?"

"I am Donald McLeod--grandfather to the psychic."

At this moment Morton became seized of the most vivid realization of
the physical characteristics of the man back of the voice. In some
mysterious way, through some hitherto unknown sense, he was aware of a
long, rugged face, with bleak and knobby brow. The lips were thin, the
mouth wide, the dark-gray eyes contemptuous. "It is all an inner
delusion caused by some resemblance of this voice to that of some one
I have known," he said to himself; but a shiver ran over him as he
questioned the old man. "If you are the grandfather of the psychic,"
he said, "I would like to ask you if you thi