silence, and once more dropped his eyes. The ladies had been silent,
and all but motionless throughout.

Well, the rest had happened comparatively quickly.

Once more, after the lapse of a few minutes, the radiance had begun to
reform; but this time it had emerged almost immediately, diffused and
misty like a nebula; had hung again before the cabinet, and then, with
a strange, gently whirling motion, had seemed to arrange itself in
lines and curves.

Gradually, as he stared at it, it had begun to take the shape and
semblance of a head, swathed in drapery, with that same drapery,
hanging, as it appeared in folds, dripping downwards to the ground,
where it lost itself in vagueness. Then, as he still stared, conscious
of nothing but the amazing fact, features appeared to be
forming--first blots and lines as of shadow, finally eyes, nose,
mouth, and chin as of a young girl....

A moment later there was no longer a doubt. It was the face of Amy
Nugent that was looking at him, grave and steady--as when he had seen
it in the moonlight above the sluice--and behind, seen half through
the strange drapery, and half apart from it, a couple of feet behind,
the face of the sleeping medium.

At that sight he had not moved nor spoken, it was enough that the fact
was there. Every power he possessed was concentrated in the one effort
of observation....

He heard from somewhere a gasping sigh, and there rose up between him
and the face the figure of the clergyman, with his head turned back
staring at the apparition, and one hand only on the table, yet with
that hand so heavy upon it that the whole table shuddered with his
shudder.

There was a movement on the left, and he heard a fierce feminine
whisper--

"Sit down, sir; sit down this instant...."

When the clergyman had again sunk down into his seat with that same
strong shudder, the luminous face was already incoherent; the features
had relapsed again into blots and shadows, the drapery was absorbing
itself upwards into the center from which it came. Once more the
nebula trembled, moved backwards, and disappeared. The next instant
the radiance went out, as if turned off by a switch. The medium
groaned gently and awoke.

Well, that had ended it. Laurie scarcely remembered the talking that
followed, the explanations, the apologies, the hardly concealed terror
of the young clergyman. The medium had come out presently, dazed and
confused. They had talked ... and so forth. Th