"I read one of them, doctor, the one from Penelope's mother--it is full of love and wisdom--and I was just beginning the other when a terrible thing happened. That is why I sent for you. I was sitting in this rocking chair with my back turned to the bedroom door, absorbed in reading this message, when suddenly--" "Wait! Let me read it first. Hello! It's for Captain Herrick." "Not all of it. Won't you read it aloud, doctor?" The medium closed her eyes while Leroy, speaking in a low tone but distinctly, repeated this mysterious communication: _Tell Captain Herrick it was I he saw on the battlefield guiding the stumbling footsteps of my little girl, helping her to find the place where he lay. I realized that, through her love for him, which she would experience later, she would build better and higher ideals than the ones she was then holding deep within her soul. Tell him also that he is in danger from something he is carrying...._ Here the writing became impossible to decipher. "See how the powers of Love work against the powers of Evil!" mused the psychic. "I must show this to Captain Herrick. Well, what happened?" Seraphine went on to say that she had just begun to read the second piece of automatic writing and had only finished a few lines--enough to see that it was very different from the first--when she felt a clutch of hands around her throat and realized that Fauvette had crept up cunningly from behind. There had been a struggle in which the medium tried vainly to cry out for help or to reach the bell, but her enemy was too strong for her, and she had grown weaker; then, using strategy, she let herself fall limp under the murderous hands, whereupon Fauvette, laughing triumphantly, had loosened her grip for a moment and allowed Seraphine to free herself. "Then I caught her and held her so that I could look into her eyes and, finally, I subdued her. She cried out that she would come back again, but I forced her to lie down and almost instantly she fell into a deep sleep." "It was your love and your fearlessness that gave you the victory," Leroy said quietly. Then he took up the other message and read it with darkening eyes. "Horrible! The change must have come while she was writing this." He opened the bedroom door softly and, with infinite compassion in his rugged face, bent over Penelope who was sleeping peacefully, her loveliness marred by no sign of evil. An hour passed now, during which the spiritual physician gave Seraphine her instructions for the night and made preparations for the struggle that he knew was before him. * * * * *