at it did mean, and it said "Yes."

This answer annoyed me, but Whibley explained that the Spirit was angry
with us for our stupidity (which seemed quaint). He informed us that it
always said first "No," and then "Yes," when it was angry, and as it was
his Spirit, and we were in his house, we kept our feelings to ourselves
and started afresh.

This time we abandoned the "Hestur" theory altogether. Jobstock
suggested "Haste" for the first word, and, thought the Spirit might have
gone on phonetically.

"Haste! you are here, Miss Sfear!" was what he made of it.

Whibley asked him sarcastically if he'd kindly explain what that meant.

I think Jobstock was getting irritable. We had been sitting cramped up
round a wretched little one-legged table all the evening, and this was
almost the first bit of gossip we had got out of it. To further excuse
him, it should also be explained that the gas had been put out by
Whibley, and that the fire had gone out of its own accord. He replied
that it was hard labour enough to find out what the thing said without
having to make sense of it.

"It can't spell," he added, "and it's got a nasty, sulky temper. If it
was my spirit I'd hire another spirit to kick it."

Whibley was one of the mildest little men I ever knew, but chaff or abuse
of his Spirit roused the devil in him, and I feared we were going to have
a scene. Fortunately, I was able to get his mind back to the
consideration of "Hesturnemysfear" before anything worse happened than a
few muttered remarks about the laughter of fools, and want of reverence
for sacred subjects being the sign of a shallow mind.

We tried "He's stern," and "His turn," and the "fear of Hesturnemy," and
tried to think who "Hesturnemy" might be. Three times we went over the
whole thing again from the beginning, which meant six hundred and six
tiltings of the table, and then suddenly the explanation struck
me--"Eastern Hemisphere."

Whibley had asked it for any information it might possess concerning his
wife's uncle, from whom he had not heard for months, and that apparently
was its idea of an address.

The fame of Whibley's Spirit became noised abroad, with the result that
Whibley was able to command the willing service of more congenial
assistants, and Jobstock and myself were dismissed. But we bore no
malice.

Under these more favourable conditions the Spirit plucked up wonderfully,
and talked everybody's head off. It could never have