rd of communication, by which the
force beyond can give him, as it were, an electric shock, and awaken
his higher senses. It opens the sleeping eye of the mind."

"I'm suspectible," said Fisher, either with simplicity or with a
baffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me? My friend Harold
March here will tell you I sometimes see things, even in the dark."

"Nobody sees anything except in the dark," said the magician.

Heavy clouds of sunset were closing round the wooden hut, enormous
clouds, of which only the corners could be seen in the little
window, like purple horns and tails, almost as if some huge monsters
were prowling round the place. But the purple was already deepening
to dark gray; it would soon be night.

"Do not light the lamp," said the magus with quiet authority,
arresting a movement in that direction. "I told you before that
things happen only in the dark."

How such a topsy-turvy scene ever came to be tolerated in the
colonel's office, of all places, was afterward a puzzle in the
memory of many, including the colonel. They recalled it like a sort
of nightmare, like something they could not control. Perhaps there
was really a magnetism about the mesmerist; perhaps there was even
more magnetism about the man mesmerized. Anyhow, the man was being
mesmerized, for Horne Fisher had collapsed into a chair with his
long limbs loose and sprawling and his eyes staring at vacancy; and
the other man was mesmerizing him, making sweeping movements with
his darkly draped arms as if with black wings. The colonel had
passed the point of explosion, and he dimly realized that eccentric
aristocrats are allowed their fling. He comforted himself with the
knowledge that he had already sent for the police, who would break
up any such masquerade, and with lighting a cigar, the red end of
which, in the gathering darkness, glowed with protest.

"Yes, I see pockets," the man in the trance was saying. "I see many
pockets, but they are all empty. No; I see one pocket that is not
empty."

There was a faint stir in the stillness, and the magician said, "Can
you see what is in the pocket?"

"Yes," answered the other; "there are two bright things. I think
they are two bits of steel. One of the pieces of steel is bent or
crooked."

"Have they been used in the removal of the relic from downstairs?"

"Yes."

There was another pause and the inquirer added, "Do you see anything
of the relic itself?"

"I see something