This happened in June. I had never expected to see Billings’s mud-heap again, but I saw it before the end of July. I went there because Billings had written me that if I cared for him and our life-long friendship, and for poor Penrhyn’s boy I must come at once. He could not explain by letter what the matter was. It added to my natural concern when, on my arrival, Billings hurried me into the library and I found it as theosophic as ever. I had hoped that that nonsense was ended. But worse was to come. “When you were here before,” said Billings, impressively, without having once mentioned champagne, “you scoffed at a light which you couldn’t see. Now, my friend, I am going to let you see it with your own eyes, and you shall tell me whether or no you are convinced that it is possible for one human being to exchange his entity with another. If I have brought you here on a wild goose chase, I am willing to have you procure a judicial examination into my sanity, and I will abide the issue.” [Illustration] He spoke with so much quiet gravity that he made me feel creepy. “See here, old man,” I said; “do you mean to tell me that you have succeeded in pairing off with any other fellow’s Ghoollah, or Woollah, or whatever it is?” “No,” he said, coloring a little; “it’s not I. It’s--it’s--it’s--in fact, it’s that boy Penrhyn.” “What the deuce do you mean?” I demanded. “I mean that Arthur Penrhyn has changed, or, rather, is changing his spiritual essence with another man.” “Indeed,” said I; “and who’s the other man?” “Randolph Mitchel,” said Billings. “Mitch?” “Mitch!” There is no need of describing the rest of that interview. You have probably met the man who believes that the spirit of his grandmother came out of the cabinet and shook hands with him. You can probably imagine how you would talk to that man if he had brought you eight hundred miles to tell you about it. That is what happened in Billings’s library that afternoon, and it ended, of course, in our calling each other “old man” a great many times over, and in my agreeing to stay to the end of the week, and in Billings giving me his word of honor not to open his mouth on the subject unless at the end of that time I asked him to and admitted that he was right in sending for me. And then Billings did something that knocked my consciousness of superiority clean out of me, and gave a severe shock to my confidence. He offered to bet me five hundred dollars to anything that would make it interesting on that contingency, and he called me down and down till I had to compromise on a bet of fifty dollars even. I have met many men in the course of my life who believed in various spook-religions, but that was the first and only time that I ever met a man who would back his faith with a cold money bet. * * * * *