names of two or
three of these American gentlemen.

"I _must_ have mentioned them to my sister in my letters," he said,
turning to the younger man. I knew this was _not_ the case, but it was
difficult to prove a negative.

It was a relief, therefore, when my brother suggested what he
considered a "real test," where previous knowledge on my part must be
excluded.

"Let them tell me the name of a bearer I had once in India--he lived
with me for more than twelve years--always returning to me when I came
back from English furlough, and yet at the end of that time he suddenly
disappeared, without rhyme or reason, and I have neither seen nor heard
of him since. I _know_ my sister has never heard his name. _That_ would
be something like a test, but, of course, it won't come off," he added
cynically.

The wearisome spelling out began.

The table rose up at R, then at A.

"Quite wrong," my brother called out in triumph. "I knew how it would be
when any real test came. Fortunately, too, it is wildly wrong--neither
the letter before nor the letter after the right one, so you cannot
wriggle out of it that way."

"Never mind, Major Bates," said Morton Freer good-naturedly. "Let us go
on all the same, and see what they mean to spell out."

Fortunately, we did so, with a most interesting result; for the right
name was given after all, but spelt in the Hindoostanee and not the
European fashion. The name in true Hindoostanee was Ram Din--but
Europeans spelt it Rham Deen--and so my brother himself had entirely
forgotten when the A was given that it had any connection with the man's
name. When the whole word was spelt out, of course he remembered, and
then his face was a study!

"Good gracious! it is right enough, and that is the real Hindoostanee
spelling, too. I never thought of that when the A came!"

I think this episode knocked the bottom out of his scepticism for some
years to come.

Even now this case precludes ordinary and conscious telepathy. Mr
Podmore would be reduced to explaining that the Hindoostanee spelling
was latent in my brother's consciousness, though his normal self
repudiated it.

Another curious incident--still more difficult to explain upon the
Thought Transference Theory (unless we stretch it to include a possible
impact of _all_ thoughts, at all times and from all quarters of the
globe, upon everyone else's brain)--occurred under the same hospitable
roof.

One of the Archdeacon's nieces came to