"Mrs. Lambert's also," added Morton.

"Our hands are all touching," answered Kate.

"Now, let us see!" cried Weissmann, and his voice rang triumphantly.
"Now, spirits, to your work!"

Clarke laughed contemptuously. "You scientists are very amusing. Your
unbelief is heroic."

As they stood thus a powerful revulsion took place in Morton's mind,
and with a painful constriction in his throat he bowed to the silent
girl, and with an inconsistency which he would not have published to
the world, he prayed that something might happen--not to demonstrate
the return of the dead but to prove her innocence.

As he waited the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir
his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like
the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make
every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk.
Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A
banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with
tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some
inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone
tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still--a silence
deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had
whirled upward and away, leaving the scene of their revels empty,
desolate, and forlorn.

"That is all," said Clarke.

"How can you tell?" asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe.

"The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may
turn up the gas, but very slowly."

Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his
experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the
light.

Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her,
bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a
picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted
chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who
devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless lust the
fairest of the race.

Of her innocence he was at that moment profoundly convinced.

XIV

PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS

While he still stood looking down upon her Viola began to moan and
toss her head from side to side.

"She is waking," cried Mrs. Lambert. "Let me go to her."

"No!" commanded Weissmann, "disturb nothing till we have examined all
things."

"Make your stu