I asked Miss Vincent what name was written at the bottom of the paper. "It looks like Ethel," she said, "but it is not very clear. I will ask the spirit to write it again." A very bold and unmistakable signature was at once given. I concealed my excitement, and said quietly to Miss Vincent: "I think I know from whom the message comes and for whom it is intended, but to make quite sure it would be very satisfactory if the spirit could give through you a sign agreed upon by the sender and the recipient and unknown to everyone else." "Well, I will try," said Miss Vincent at once. She had scarcely touched the pencil when it began describing a circle. "There is no doubt about my having to make a circle," she said, laughing. "Oh, now I am to put a cross into it," she added. Within a few seconds both these were given, and to _our_ great delight--as well as to his--the sign was recognised by Mr Stead as being the one agreed upon, and which had hopelessly puzzled all the other mediums. CHAPTER XII 1900-1901 I must now note a curious episode connected with my friend Judge Forbes, whose astral influence I had traced clinging to the rooms he once occupied in Cambridge. As before mentioned, he had married, and I had lost sight of him and his whole family for many years. But we had several mutual friends, through whom I had heard of the birth of his only son and only child, and later of the boy being sent to Eton, and eventually entering the army. This was very shortly before the breaking out of the South African War, and the young fellow was one of many who were drafted from India, after a few months' service there, to help to defend their Queen's possessions and their countrymen's lives and property in South Africa. Later, young Forbes was shut up in Ladysmith, and one cold, dismal day in January (6th January 1900) I was lying very ill in bed with a severe bronchial attack in the house of my eldest brother in Hampshire, when the latter came home one evening from the Winchester Club and told us of the celebrated _sortie_ and the death of three young English officers. The name of Forbes of the Royal Rifles figured amongst these, and I felt convinced that it must be the only child of my old friend. Without hesitation I prepared to write a few short lines of sympathy with the heart-broken father. In vain my sister-in-law protested against my concluding at once that it must be the judge's son, since other members of the family of the same name were known to be in the army. I had not a moment's doubt that this was the boy already mentioned, and even a silence of over twenty years seemed to present no difficulty in expressing one's deep sympathy, in the face of such a sorrow. The real drawback lay in my weak state of health and physical inability to write more than a few lines. But in these I expressed a hope that _in time_ my poor friend might come to realise that his boy was "as much alive and as near to him as ever--perhaps nearer."