inary. If you can do all these things--spirits and all
the rest--can't you do something ever so much simpler, that's beyond
mistake?"

"Oh, I daresay. But wouldn't you ask yet another after that?"

"I don't know."

"Or wouldn't you think you'd been hypnotized?"

Laurie shook his head.

"I'm not a fool," he said.

"Then give me that pencil," said the medium, suddenly extending his
hand.

Laurie stared a moment. Then he handed over the pencil.

On the little table by the arm-chair, a couple of feet from Laurie,
stood the whisky apparatus and a box of cigarettes. These the medium,
without moving from his chair, lifted off and set on the floor beside
him, leaving the woven-grass surface of the table entirely bare. He
then laid the pencil gently in the center--all without a word. Laurie
watched him carefully.

"Now kindly do not speak one word or make one movement," said the man
peremptorily. "Wait! You're perfectly sure you're not hypnotized, or
any other nonsense?"

"Certainly not."

"Just go round the room, look out of the window, poke the
fire--anything you like."

"I'm satisfied," said the boy.

"Very good. Then kindly watch that pencil."

The medium leaned a little forward in his chair, bending his eyes
steadily upon the little wooden cylinder lying, like any other pencil,
on the top of the table. Laurie glanced once at him, then back
again. There it lay, common and ordinary.

For at least a minute nothing happened at all, except that from the
intentness of the elder man there seemed once more to radiate out that
curious air of silence that Laurie was beginning to know so well--that
silence that seemed impenetrable to the common sounds of the world and
to exist altogether independent of them. Once and again he glanced
round at the ordinary-looking room, the curtained windows, the dull
furniture; and the second time he looked back at the pencil he was
almost certain that some movement had just taken place with it. He
resolutely fixed his eyes upon it, bending every faculty he possessed
into one tense attitude of attention. And a moment later he could not
resist a sudden movement and a swift indrawing of breath; for there,
before his very eyes, the pencil tilted, very hesitatingly and
quiveringly, as if pulled by a spider's thread. He heard, too, the
tiny tap of its fall.

He glanced at the medium, who jerked his head impatiently, as if for
silence. Then once more the silence came down.

A minute