answered Phillips.
"Oh, what was it like? Wasn't it smooth and soft and cold?" demanded the mother of the first apparition.
"Yes," said Phillips; "it was a sensation like the touch of a kid glove."
" Oh, of course, of course!" Mr. Eccles burst out, in a sort of scornful groan. "A stuffed glove! If we are to approach the investigation in this spirit"—
"I beg your pardon?" said Phillips, inquiringly.
"I'm sure," interposed Dr. Boynton, "that Mr. Phillips, whom I have had the honor of introducing to this circle, has intended nothing but a bona fide description of the sensation he experienced."
"I don't understand," said Phillips.
" You were not aware, then," pursued the doctor, "that there have been attempts to impugn the character of these and similar materializations,—in fact, to prove that these hands are merely stuffed gloves, mechanically operated?"
"Not at all!" cried Phillips.
" I was certain of your good feeling, your delicacy," said the doctor. "We will go on, friends."
But the apparitions had apparently ceased, while the raps, which had been keeping up a sort of desultory, telegraphic tattoo throughout, when not actively in use as a means of conversation with the disembodied presences, suddenly seemed to cover the whole surface of the table with their detonation.
"The materializations are over," said Mrs. Le Roy, speaking for the first time. Her voice, small and thin, oddly contrasted with her physical bulk.
"Oh, pshaw, Mrs. Le Roy!" protested Hatch, "don't give it up that way. Come! I want Jim. Ladies, join me in loud cries for Jim."
Several of the ladies beset Mrs. Le Roy, who at last yielded so far as to ask if Jim were present. A sharp affirmative rap responded, and after an interval, during which the spectators peered anxiously into the dark box, a sort of dull fumbling was heard, and another materialization was evidently in progress.
"You can't see the hand of a gentleman of Jim's complexion against that black cloth," said Hatch, rising. "Lend me your handkerchiefs, ladies. James has a salt and sullen rheum offends him."
Several ladies made haste to offer their handkerchiefs, and, leaning over, Hatch draped them about the bottom of the box. The flaps were again agitated, and a large black hand showed itself distinctly against the white ground formed by the handkerchiefs. It was hailed with a burst of ecstasy from all those who seemed to be frequenters of these seances, and it wagged an awkward salutation to the company.
"Good for you, good for you, James!" said Hatch, approvingly. "Rings? Wish to adorn your person, James?" he continued.
The hand gesticulated an imaginable assent to this proposal, and Hatch gravely said, "Your rings, ladies." A half dozen were passed to him, and he contrived, with some trouble, to slip them on the fingers of the hand, which continually moved itself, in spite of many caressing demands from the ladies (with whom Jim was apparently a favorite specter) that he would hold still, and Hatch's repeated admonition that he should moderate his transports. When the rings were all in place, the hand was still dissatisfied, as it seemed, and beckoned toward Egeria. "Want Miss Boynton's ring?" asked Hatch.
The girl gave a start, involuntarily laying hold of the ring, and Dr. Boynton said instantly, " He cannot have it. The ring was her mother's." This drew general attention to Miss Boynton's ring: it was what is called a marchioness ring, and was set with a long black stone, sharply pointed at either end.
"All right; beg pardon, doctor," said Hatch, respectfully; but the hand, after a moment's hesitation, sank through the aperture, as if in dudgeon, and was heard knocking off the rings against the table underneath. This seemed a climax for which the familiars of the house had been waiting. The ladies who had lent their rings to Mr. Hatch, and had joined their coaxing voices to his in entreating the black hand to be quiet, now rose with a rustle of drapery, and joyously cackled satisfaction in Jim's characteristic behavior.
"That is the last," Mrs. Le Roy announced, and withdrew. Someone turned on the light, and Hatch began to pick up the rings under the table; this was the occasion of renewed delight in Jim on the part of the ladies to whom Hatch restored their property.
"Would you like to look under the table?" asked Dr. Boynton of Ford, politely lifting the cloth and throwing it back.
"I don't care to look," said Ford, remaining seated, and keeping the same impassive face with which he had witnessed all the shows of the seance.
Dr. Boynton directed a glance of invitation at Phillips, who stooped and peered curiously at the underside of the table, and then passed his hand over the carpet beneath the aperture. "No signs of a trap?" suggested the doctor.
"No, quite solid," said Phillips.
"These things are evidently merely in their inception," remarked the doctor, candidly. "I wouldn't advise their implicit acceptation under all circumstances, but here the conditions strike me as simple and really very fair."
"I've been very greatly interested indeed," said Phillips, "and I shouldn't at all attempt to explain what I've seen."
"We shall now try our own experiment," said the doctor, looking round at the windows, through the blinds and curtains of which the early twilight was stealing. "Mr. Hatch, will you put up the battening?" While Hatch made haste to darken the windows completely with some light wooden sheathings prepared for the purpose, Dr. Boynton included Ford also in his explanation. " What we are about to do requires the exclusion of all light. These intelligences, whatever they are, that visit us seem peculiarly sensitive to certain qualities of light; they sometimes endure candles pretty well, but they dislike gas even more than daylight, and we shall shut that off entirely. Yes, my dear," he said, turning lightly toward his daughter, who, apparently relieved from the spell under which she had sat throughout the seance, now approached him, and addressed him some entreaty in a low tone, to which the anxiety of her serious face gave its effect. Ford watched them narrowly while they spoke together; she evidently beseeching, and her father urging with a sort of obdurate kindness, from which she turned at last in despair, and sat listlessly down again in her place. One might have interpreted the substance of their difference as light or weighty, but there could be no doubt of its result in the girl's reluctant obedience. She sat with her long hands in her lap and her eyes downcast, while the young man bent his glance upon her with a somewhat softened curiosity. Phillips drew up a chair beside her, and began to address her some evening-party conversation, to which, after her first terrified start at the sound of his voice, she listened with a look of dull mystification, and a vague and monosyllabic comment. He was in the midst of this difficult part when Dr. Boynton announced that the preparations were now perfect, and invited the company to seat themselves in a circle around his daughter, from whose side Phillips was necessarily driven. Mrs. Le Roy re-entered, and after a survey of the forming circle took her place with the rest. Dr. Boynton instantly shut off the gas, and several of the circle, led by Miss Merrill, began to sing. It was music in a minor key, and as the sound of it fell the air was suddenly filled with noises of a heterogeneous variety. Voices whispered here and there, overhead and, as it appeared, underfoot; a fan was caught up, and each person in the circle was swiftly and violently fanned; a music-box, placed on Phillips's knee, was wound up, and then set floating, as it seemed, through the air; rings were snatched from some fingers and roughly thrust upon others, amidst the cries and nervous laughter of the women.
Through all, the mystical voices continued, and now they began to be recognized by different persons in the circle. The mother of one briefly visited
