“But I got something when I tried,” said Mrs. Layton, with an air of interest. “To be sure it was rank nonsense, but it was something, and _I_ didn’t do it myself, whatever it was.” “No; you said it was the work of the devil, and flung the planchette aside in disgust. What a convenience the devil is, anyway! How could the world get on without him? Everything the veriest dunce doesn’t understand is laid at his door. If he had never been invented, who would shoulder all the mysteries? Poor devil! Without being to blame he has been a terrific stumbling-block to the enlightenment of mankind. Wherever a persevering and heroic mind clipped out a crevice in the wall of ignorance, some dense-minded being was on hand to seize the devil and put him into it, to obscure whatever light might filter through. And so, though innocent himself, he has kept mankind in darkness through the centuries.” However, devil or no devil, they covered a table with a big sheet of white paper, of the kind used by the _Register_, and put Planchette upon it. The Butterfly put her tiny hand thereon, and they awaited its pleasure. As they were ignorant of the particular methods of its operation, they could but grope tentatively till they found the true way, just as the human race has groped upward through countless vain experiments and innumerable grievous blunders into such light as it now enjoys. The occasion was in no way tinged with solemnity. They built no hopes on its outcome, nor gave it serious thought. It was the Butterfly’s inspiration, born of her dream. So little importance did they attach to it, that they fell to chatting of other things at once, leaving Planchette to its own devices, Mrs. Layton’s hand still resting on it, however. Suddenly their chatter ceased. Planchette began to move across the paper, not aimlessly, as they expected, but deliberately and precisely, with intelligence and force. As suddenly as it had begun it stopped. They lifted it up and looked at its trail, and there was a word plainly and evenly written--the word “Gaily.” “More of its nonsense, just as I feared,” sighed the Butterfly, in disgust. “Well, try it again, dear,” pleaded her friend. “It’s worth studying, even if it does write nonsense. It’s extraordinary that it writes at all.” With polite alacrity it wrote again with more ease and speed than before: “Do you not remember Gaily--Gaily, the Troubadour?” This had no meaning for the Butterfly, and she was about to express her displeasure, when she glanced at her friend. Cartice was leaning far back in the chair, her face white and drawn, her mouth slightly open, her eyes startled and staring, and her breath coming in gasps. “O Cartice, dearest! Don’t look like that! Don’t!” Chrissalyn cried in a terrified voice, jumping up and seizing her friend in her arms, alternately shaking and embracing her. “What is it? What do you see? What has happened?”