out of reach of the most delicate tests of science as is the essence that forms the soul, and that these minute entities of awful potency are prime factors in the soul itself, Jack, hearing all this, was as bewildered as though the brain-haze microbe had made easy lodgment in his gray matter. Still he was fascinated with the argument.

When the medium claimed that electrons occupy an atom something as a colony of ants occupy a ten-acre lot, and yet one gramme of electrons contains force enough to lift the Washington monument on to the top of Pike's Peak without straining a muscle, Jack's head felt like the pate of a cyclist who made an involuntary effort to smooth down a road covered with cracked stone; and when the medium said that an ether atom can permeate a material atom and become an electronic trinity in an atomic unity, a condition which scientists consider as absurd as the luminous end of a glowworm hitched to the rear end of a mosquito, Jack was not sure that he had any head at all.

But the practical demonstrations of the medium are what puzzled him as much as the colic puzzles a camel when its seventh stomach is involved. Luminous appearances occurred. Hands self-illuminated, or visible

by natural or artificial light, were passed about in shaking attitudes. Skeptics grasped them, and, while they made no effort to get away, they gradually resolved into nebulous matter, leaving the hands of unbelievers empty and their minds full of perturbed thoughts. Once a nebulous cloud appeared, condensed itself into a shapely hand, plucked flowers from a vase on the table at which the medium was sitting, and presented them to the faithful who stood near the place of manifestation. To tell an unembroidered truth, the movements of several heavy substances, such as chairs and desks, were inexplicable to Jack except as a phenomena of some mysterious force.

When he observed a desk, placed in an exposed position, slowly arise from the floor, while two persons held the medium in his chair, it was with difficulty that he prevented himself from a burst of applause. But it must be confessed with reluctance that these manifestations were nothing compared to what some of the more sensitive minds said they saw while Jack was absent. They claimed that the bonnet of a spinster was lifted from her wig, and floating through the auditorium, remained poised over the head of an old bachelor, and the medium

observed that it was an evidence of affinity, as well as a happy omen, at which the entire audience gave itself up to nervous glee. Some, who were scantily supplied with gray matter, insisted that during one of the seances the medium, by some occult force, was raised from the floor, and, floating out of one open window, was wafted in at another, during low lights, while an invisible organist played the national anthem with variations. Fortunately, Jack did not witness these manifestations, for he was already saturated with psychology, and other concealed things, sufficient to make him a good medium of the mysterious forces.

During one of the seances the medium maintained that the air is teeming with the spirits of the dead. He said that he used the word "teeming" advisedly, because, since Cain killed Abel over twenty-five billions of mortals had taken on immortality. In other words, so many bodied spirits had become disembodied and were floating around through cosmic ether that if it were not for the fact that several can occupy the same space at the same time they would have to use folding tooth brushes for the want of

room.

And the professor permitted other remark

able statements to escape from his gray matter. He said that around the living constantly hover these rarely visible, but always present, astral bodies, composed of fixed ether. Of course, Jack Stanley was impressed. He was so impressed that he would not sit down when he was tired for fear of resting on some departed ancestor or friend. In this nervous condition he left the seance one night at the hour when church yards are busy, feeling very much like an ethero-material phenomenon himself.

It was his duty, every night before retiring, to fix the furnace, which was located at the farthermost end of a long dark cellar, in the home where he lodged. As he entered the old-fashioned house the tall clock in the hall struck the hour of midnight, and each stroke sounded like a muffled moan. As these died away a dead silence filled the hallway and the deserted rooms on either side. All were in deep sleep throughout the house. Jack groped his way in the darkness to the cellar door and timidly swung it open. creaked on its hinges and he started back. Then, as he cautiously approached the doorway and peered into the blackness below, slowly from its depths a group of manifestations floated up the cellar stairway, and

It

vaporous hands seized him and smothered voices cried, " Come with us," and he seemed drawn down into the opaque gloom below.

A startled rat scurried across the cellar floor. To Jack it seemed a bunch of submundane agents whose rasping voices threaded the denseness of the night. He moved slowly toward the furnace, and the laughter of ghostly legions greeted him on either side, while behind were echoing footsteps of pursuit, then the laughter turned to hisses as if snakes were at his back. He hurried to the furnace. A group stood there with waving arms and yellow eyes. Jack gripped his hands to still the beating of his heart. He never had believed in ghosts, but like most mortals he feared them, and now that they were crowding about him, and pushing each other in their eagerness to get near, and creeping up silently from all directions, peering at him from out of the gloom, he could feel the glitter of their yellow eyes, and he was stunned and stupefied.

The furnace seemed a blazing creature radiating intense heat from its grim form. He seized the door, opened it, and the ghostly denizens of the cellar began to batten their eyes in the sudden light. He shook the grate and the metallic ring of the iron made