“I can’t explain why I should have the gift of magnetic induction,” laughed Karl. “I discovered it accidentally one day when I was making an experiment with a freely suspended needle to determine a magnetic meridian. I became very interested, the adjustment required delicate manipulation, and suddenly my hands went cold, while the needle followed their movements. Feel my hands now!” I caught his right hand. It was so icy to the touch that I believe I started. “I really think I could magnetize your hands,” he went on. “Shall I try?” Naturally, I agreed. Without permitting the poker to fall, he commenced to stroke my hands from the finger-tips to the wrists. Soon I felt a sensation akin to plunging them into snow. And behold, when he quitted me, that most eccentric of pokers yielded to _my_ blandishments! But in my case a more orthodox circulation quickly shattered the magnetic axis. In a few seconds the poker tottered, and would have fallen had I not caught it. The marked diminution of temperature experienced while I was under the influence of Karl’s electric energy was not the least interesting feature of a curious incident, seeing that it is an axiom of the classroom that all magnetic phenomena vanish completely if a magnet be made red-hot! All this has astonishingly little to do with the more exciting personal affairs of a charming young lady like Maggie Hutchinson. But it is reasonable to suppose that Karl, anxious to secure the counsel of an older man, thought fit to show this imaginary Solomon how necessary faith was to the performance of good works, and it is in this same spirit of convincing the incredulous that I have related the trivial yet quite extraordinary poker-balancing of that summer’s afternoon in the Mitre Hotel, Oxford. CHAPTER VIII MAGGIE HUTCHINSON INTERVENES “When you two have finished your parlor-tricks,” said Hooper, endeavoring to copy a judicial eye-glare he had seen used by the Lord Chief Justice, “this committee will proceed to the business of the sitting.” It was, indeed, necessary for our budding lawyer to recall our wandering thoughts to the affairs of the girl whom we believed to be then half-way across the Atlantic on a journey to the British Isles. We might accept Karl’s mediumistic statements to the fullest extent, not only reading into them the literal significance of the conversations and scenes he reported, but also paying heed to the logical outcome of these episodes; yet there were serious difficulties in the way of applying the information thus acquired. Put baldly, what would Karl say to Miss Margaret Hutchinson, who was presumably accompanied by her mother, if he went to meet the _Merlin_ at Liverpool?