"'Yes, this was round your waist, and by this you were strapped to this iron bar here. You see, the rod passes through the floor. The cross-bar must have been fastened to it while you were singing. My poor child, pray do not try to sustain a falsehood. You are so young that you are hardly responsible for what you have done. You were in these people's power, and they could make you do what they liked. Pray be candid with us. We want to befriend you if we can, do we not, Mrs. Ravenshaw?' "'Yes, indeed we do, poor thing!' answered the lady heartily. 'Only be truthful with us.' "'Indeed, I am telling the truth,' the girl protested tearfully. 'I did not know of that strap, or of the iron rod. They told me I was gifted--that I was in communion with my dear dead father, when I felt my soul uplifted--as I have felt it often and often, sitting singing to myself, alone in my room. I have felt as if my spirit were soaring away and away, upward to that world beyond the skies where my father and my mother are. I have felt as if, while my body remained below, my spirit were floating upward and upward, away from earth and sorrow. I told the Frau how I used to feel, because I believed in her. She brought me into communion with my father. He used to rap out messages of love; and she taught me how to understand the spirit language. That was how I came to know her. That was how I was willing to go with them and join in their _séances_.' "'I begin to understand,' said I. 'They told you that you were gifted, and that you had a power of floating upward from the floor to the ceiling?' "'Yes. It came upon me unawares. They asked me to sing, and to let my spirit float towards heaven as I sang. I always used to feel like that of an evening in our church in the country. I used to feel my soul lifted upward when I sang the _Magnificat_. And one night at a _séance_, soon after we came to London, I was singing, and I felt myself floating upward. It seemed as if some powerful hands were holding me up; and I felt round me in the half-darkness, and there was no one near. I was moving alone, without any visible help; and I felt that it was the passionate longing of my spirit to approach the spirit of my dead father which was lifting me up. And, oh, was it only that horrid strap and that iron rod?' she exclaimed, bursting into tears. 'How cruel--how cruel to cheat me like that!' "She had evidently no thought of the public who were cheated, or of her own position as a detected impostor, or the tool and accomplice of impostors. Her tears were for the dream so rudely broken. "The tramping in and out of rooms was over by this time. The majority of the audience were leaving the house, the sea-dog loud in his disgust and indignation till the last moment.