ween them, enclosing within its two sections a tiny fragment of
slate pencil. She placed her hands upon the slate and bade her sitter do
likewise.

"You often hear skeptics say they is sometimes trickery in this," said
the Countess, "but say, listen now, how could it be? I leave it to you,
friend. I ain't seen your question; you held it a minute and then put it
in your pocket. An' you seen the slate was clean. Now concentrate; go
into the Silence!"

Bean went into the Silence without suspicion, believing the Countess
would fail. She couldn't know his question and no human power could
write on the inside of that slate without detection. He waited with
sympathy for the woman who had overestimated her gifts.

Then he was startled by the faintest sound of scratching, as of a pencil
on a slate. It seemed to issue from beneath their hands at rest there in
plain sight. The medium closed her eyes. Bean waited, his breath
quickening. Little nervous crinklings began at the roots of his hair and
descended his spine--that scratching, faint, yet vigorous, did it come
from beyond the veil?

The scratching ceased. The ensuing silence was portentous.

"Open it and look!" commanded the Countess. And Bean forthwith opened it
and looked a little way into his dead and dread past. Apparently upon
the very surface he had washed clean were words that seemed to have been
hurriedly inscribed:

"_The last time you was Napolen Bonopart._"

He stared wonderingly at those marks made by no mortal hand. He thrilled
with a vast elation; and yet instantly a suspicion formed that here was
something to his discredit, something one wouldn't care to have known.
He had read as little history as possible, yet there floated in his mind
certain random phrases, "A Corsican upstart," "An assassin," "No
gentleman!"

"I--I suppose--you're sure there can't be any doubt about this?"

He looked pleadingly at the Countess. But the Countess was a mere
psychic instrument, it seemed, and had to be told, first of the
question--he produced it with a suspicion that she might doubt his
honesty--and then of the astounding answer. Thus enlightened, she
protested that there could be no doubt about the truth of the answer;
she was ready to stake her professional reputation on its truth. She
regarded Bean with an awe which she made no attempt to conceal.

"You had your _day_," she said significantly; "pomps and powers and--and
attentions!"

Bean was excitedly piecin