w," said Symon, bitterly.

"It can be put back," replied Fisher.

Twyford had already run upstairs for news of his vanishing nephew,
and he received news of him in a way that at once puzzled and
reassured him. On the floor above lay one of those large paper darts
which boys throw at each other when the schoolmaster is out of the
room. It had evidently been thrown in at the window, and on being
unfolded displayed a scrawl of bad handwriting which ran: "Dear
Uncle; I am all right. Meet you at the hotel later on," and then the
signature.

Insensibly comforted by this, the clergyman found his thoughts
reverting voluntarily to his favorite relic, which came a good
second in his sympathies to his favorite nephew, and before he knew
where he was he found himself encircled by the group discussing its
loss, and more or less carried away on the current of their
excitement. But an undercurrent of query continued to run in his
mind, as to what had really happened to the boy, and what was the
boy's exact definition of being all right.

Meanwhile Horne Fisher had considerably puzzled everybody with his
new tone and attitude. He had talked to the colonel about the
military and mechanical arrangements, and displayed a remarkable
knowledge both of the details of discipline and the technicalities
of electricity. He had talked to the clergyman, and shown an equally
surprising knowledge of the religious and historical interests
involved in the relic. He had talked to the man who called himself a
magician, and not only surprised but scandalized the company by an
equally sympathetic familiarity with the most fantastic forms of
Oriental occultism and psychic experiment. And in this last and
least respectable line of inquiry he was evidently prepared to go
farthest; he openly encouraged the magician, and was plainly
prepared to follow the wildest ways of investigation in which that
magus might lead him.

"How would you begin now?" he inquired, with an anxious politeness
that reduced the colonel to a congestion of rage.

"It is all a question of a force; of establishing communications for
a force," replied that adept, affably, ignoring some military
mutterings about the police force. "It is what you in the West used
to call animal magnetism, but it is much more than that. I had
better not say how much more. As to setting about it, the usual
method is to throw some susceptible person into a trance, which
serves as a sort of bridge or co