rade'--they's no possible show fur you--an' Mis' Taylor here, who's a
personal friend, you might say, of all the leadin' sperrits in the
Sperrit World, has come to kind of prepare you--"

Mullendore's lips moved with an effort:

"There ain't nothin' after this."

"Oh, my!" Teeters ejaculated in a shocked voice. "Don't say heathen
things like that! If you'd seen half of what I've saw you couldn't
nowise doubt."

"There ain't no hell--there ain't no comin' back." The voice was
stronger, and querulous.

Teeters wagged his head in horrified reproach.

"Mis' Taylor, do you think the sperrits are goin' to take holt?"

Turning to the lady who hoped to be his mother-in-law, Teeters's eyes
started in his head. He was familiar with weird gyrations of the kitchen
table, and messages received through the medium of the ouija board, but
he never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to as
her "control" evidence itself in any such fashion as this.

With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands
lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor's chest was rising and falling in
convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and
her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her
eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in a
trance.

Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did not
understand, but in a vague way he regarded Mrs. Taylor as an unconscious
fakir, whose spiritual communications bore the earmarks of something
she had learned in a quite ordinary way.

There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeters
was convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of Mullendore's dull
eyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life by
an electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly between
labored breaths:

"It is turgid--dark--all is confusion--spirits are assembling--they are
spirits of unrest--there is no peace--no happiness. There is horror in
every distorted face--they have met--violent deaths--they want to
talk--they clamor to be heard--they--"

"It's a lie!" Mullendore's whisper was shrill, aspirate. "There ain't no
other world! There ain't no comin' back!"

"Clouds roll up--" she went on, "clouds of red smoke--they shut the
spirits out--new ones come--dim at first--but I can't see--yet. Wait!"

The woman's stare seemed to carry her through and beyon