This Jack Irons who was with us that day was his only son, and when Daniel the Mystic looked at him and called him, Jack stepped out from our midst and went toward him, his feet dragging a little and moving as if some one had him by the shoulders leading him forward. His thin arms dangled at his sides. He went on until he was close up to Daniel the Mystic. The man threw up one hand and snapped out “Stop,” as though he were teaching tricks to a dog, and Jack flinched and dodged. He stopped though, with red spots coming and going in the cheeks as though under the stoking of a blowpipe, and he breathed in sharp puffs that pulled his nostrils almost shut. Standing so, he looked as poor and weak and futile as a sprig of bleached celery, as a tow string, as a limp rag, as anything helpless and spineless that you had a mind to think of. The picture of him has hung in my mind ever since. Even now I recall how his meager frame quivered as Daniel the Mystic stooped until his eyes were on a level with Jack's eyes, and said something to Jack over and over again in a half-whisper. Suddenly his hands shot out and he began making slow stroking motions downward before Jack's face, with his fingers outstretched as though he were combing apart banks of invisible yam. Next with a quick motion he rubbed Jack's eyelids closed, and massaged his temples with his thumbs, and then stepped back. There stood Jack Irons with his eyes shut, fast asleep. He was still on his feet, bolt upright, but fast asleep--that was the marvel of it--with his hands at his side and the flushed color all gone from his cheeks. It scared us pretty badly, we boys. I think some of the grown men were a little bit scared too. We were glad that none of us had been singled out for this, and yet envious of Jack and his sudden elevation to prominence and the center of things. Daniel the Mystic seemed satisfied. He mopped drops of sweat off his face. He forked two fingers and darted them like a snake's tongue at Jack, and Jack, still asleep, obeyed them, as if he had been steel and they the two horns of a magnetic horseshoe. He swayed back and forth, and then Daniel the Mystic gave a sharp shove at the air with the palms of both hands--and Jack fell backward as though he had been hit. But he didn't fall as a boy would, doubling up and giving in. He fell stiff, like a board, without a bend in him anywhere. Daniel the Mystic leaped forward and caught him before he struck, and eased him down flat on his back and folded his arms up across his breast, and that made him look like dead.