sudden irruption, and
being eager to know all the details of their escape from the Pratt
stronghold hurried Viola and her mother away to their rooms, leaving
Lambert in Morton's care.

"Well, professor," said the miner, when they were alone, "we made the
break and won out. I reckon they're side-tracked now."

"Yes, and I hope we are done with both Pratt and Clarke; but they'll
both bear watching. Pratt I especially fear."

"He's had his notice," Lambert grimly replied. "As for Clarke, it
looks as though even Julia had got enough of him. He looked like a man
on the road to the mad-house, and I reckon she's convinced of it now."

"I pitied him, but I do not feel that you are in any sense indebted to
him. On the contrary, a large part of your daughter's slavery to the
trance is due to his pernicious influence."

"You must be something of an influence yourself, professor. It was
wonderful the way you brought her out of that trance. I never saw that
done before. I reckon you must have some kind of mesmerism about you."

"Not a particle more than you have. However, I should like to believe
in my power to help her. In fact, I do believe that. It is really a
question of her own will. The old idea of some subtle physical force
or fluid passing from the operator to the subject is no longer held.
It is not even necessary to make passes nor to put the subject in a
trance. All we need to do is suggest to her that no one, not even her
ghostly grandfather, can control her against her will. We must keep
her mind full of bright and cheerful thoughts, and convince her that
by leaving the Pratt house she has attained freedom."

"I will do what I can," said Lambert; "but I've seen her taken down so
many times, I'm a little doubtful. She's in a bad way, I admit. It has
its bad side as well as its pretty side, this religion. It unhinges a
lot of people, and I reckon Clarke's a little off or he wouldn't have
got my folks into that mess."

"Don't let Viola feel your doubt; present a confident face to her.
There is nothing supernatural in the world, nothing lying outside of
nature or outside of law. Many diseases which were once considered
demoniacal possessions we now know to be quite as natural as any other
in fact. Disease is only health gone wrong; and the mental disorder in
which Viola now stands is certainly curable if we proceed properly and
with confidence."

"I like to have you say these things, professor. They kind o' fit in