ruck, to Veronica's accounts of a seance, they
were apprehensive lest the tables should turn sportive and caper about
the rooms rapping out spirit messages, or boisterous elementals should
bump the beds up and down and fling the china about.

"That only happens if there's a powerful medium in the house,"
Veronica had assured them, and the girls devoutly hoped that none of
their number possessed the required mystic properties.

"Look here," said Raymonde one day to Ardiune, "I'm getting rather fed
up with this spook business."

"So'm I," agreed Ardiune. "I thought it was fun at first, but it's got
beyond the limit now. The sillies can talk of nothing else. I'm sick
of sitting on Veronica's bed and hearing about mediums and messages.
I'd like a potato race for a change. I vote we get up some progressive
games."

"It would be more jinky! I fancy a good many are tired of ghosts, only
they don't like to say so. Ardiune! I've got an idea! While the
school's still mad on these things, why shouldn't we have some fun out
of it? Play a rag on them, you know."

"Dress up in a sheet and rub wet matches on one's hands?" suggested
Ardiune.

[Illustration: "THE PASSAGE WAS VERY DARK, BUT MORVYTH HAD BROUGHT HER
ELECTRIC TORCH"]

"No, no! Nothing so stale as that! Why, it would hardly take in the
juniors for more than a minute. I'm angling for bigger fish. I want to
hook the Sixth!"

"H'm! Not so easy, my good girl!"

"It needs craft, of course, and one must have a suitable bait. The
common or garden ghost trick would be useless. I want something
subtle. If I could have developed mediumistic powers, now, and gone
into a trance!"

"Couldn't you?" queried Ardiune eagerly.

Raymonde shook a regretful head.

"Veronica knows too much about seances. She says the great test of the
trance is to stick pins into the medium. If she doesn't utter a groan,
then her conscious entity is suspended, and a spirit is about to
materialize. I couldn't stand being a living pin-cushion. I know I'd
squeal."

"But we might pad you with cushions. Seances are always held in the
dark, so they wouldn't find out."

"Trust Veronica to find my vulnerable spot! She detests me, and she'd
just enjoy prodding me up with pins. No, we must have something less
painful than that, please."

"Table-turning might be possible?"

"The Sixth did it, and the table was beginning to go round quite
nicely when they discovered that Linda was pushing the leg. I th