The reader must endeavour to picture to himself the scene which followed the introduction of the neighbours to this weird and most novel court of inquiry. Imagine the place to be an humble cottage in a remote and obscure hamlet; the judge and jurors, simple unsophisticated rustics; and the witness an invisible, unknown being, a denizen of a world of whose very existence mankind has been ignorant; acting by laws mysterious and inconceivable, in modes utterly beyond all human control or comprehension, and breaking through what has been deemed the dark and eternal seal of death, to reveal the long-hidden mysteries of the grave, and drag to the light secrets which not even the fabled silence of the grave could longer hide away. Those who have been accustomed to dream of death as the end of all whom its shadowy portals inclose, alone are prepared to appreciate the awful and startling reality of this strange scene, breaking apart, as it did, like a rope of sand, all the preconceived opinions of countless ages on the existence and destiny of the living dead. Those who have become familiar with the revealments of the spirit circle will only smile at the consternation evoked in this rustic party by the now familiar presence and manifestations of "the spirits," but to those who still stand in the night of superstition, deeming of all earth's countless millions as "dead," "lost," "gone," no one knows whither; never to return; to give no sign, no echo, no dim vibration from that vast gulf profound of unfathomed mystery--what a picture is that which suddenly brings them face to face with the mighty hosts of the vanished dead, all clothed in life, and girded round with a panoply of power, and light, and strength; with vivid memory of the secret wrongs deemed buried in their graves. Our cities are thronged with an unseen people who flit about us, their piercing eyes invisible to us, are scanning all our ways. The universe is teeming with them,--"THERE ARE NO DEAD,"--the air, the earth, and the sky above, are filled with a viewless host of spirit--witnesses whose messages ever declare "There is no death." CHAPTER VI. Amongst the investigators introduced to the household was a Mr. William Deusler, of Arcadia, an immediate neighbour of the Fox family at this time, and from his testimony we gather a great many interesting facts as to the evidence offered by the injured spirit in order that its identity could be clearly established. Mr. Deusler had formerly lived with his father in this house, and the message that the spirit had received an injury, prompted him to ask if either he or his father had been the cause of such an injury. On receiving an assurance that they were in no way responsible, the investigation was continued, the results being here given in Mr. Deusler's own words--