"Why, you look like a new man, that’s a fact!" she said. "Between you and me, I never really expected that you could recover, but I knew if anybody could help you it would be Masterson. I suppose he come pretty high, didn’t he? Two hundred! For the land sake! I’m sorry you had to fall into the hands of that shark, but, after all, it’s cheaper than being dead, ain’t it? A desperate disease requires a desperate remedy, they say. I wouldn’t take you for more than forty years old now, in spite of your gray hairs. "Now," she continued, "you’ve had experience and you’re in a position to know whether there’s any truth in spiritualism or not. No matter what anybody tells you about fakes or tricks and all that nonsense—I don’t say some so-called mediums ain’t collusions—you’ve demonstrated the truth of it for yourself, and you’ve found out that we can do what we say. You can afford to laugh at the skeptics and these smart-Alecs who pretend to know it all. What we claim can be proved and you’ve proved it. Lord, I’d like to know where you’d be now if you hadn’t. I’ve always said: ’Investigate it for yourself, and if you don’t get satisfaction, leave it alone for them that do. Go at it in a frank and honest spirit and try to find out the truth, and you’ll generally come out convinced.’ I don’t believe in no underhanded ways of going to work at it neither. If you was going to study up Christian Science, or Mo-homedism, we’ll say, you wouldn’t be trying to deceive them and giving false names and all, and why should you when you want to find out about the spirit world? What you want to do is to depend upon the character of the information you get, to test the truth of what we claim. You treat us square and we’ll treat you square. We ain’t infalliable, but we can help. Whatever is to be had from the spirit plane we can generally get it for you." "I’m very much interested," Mr. Payson said. "There does seem to be something in it, and I want to get to the bottom of it. There are several things I’d like to get help on, too." "Do you know, I knew they was something worrying you," she replied, smiling placidly. She laid her fingers to her silken thorax. "I felt your magnetism right here when you came in, and I got a feeling of unpleasantness or worry. It ain’t about a little thing either; it’s an important matter, now, ain’t it?" Mr. Payson, affected by her sympathy, admitted that it was. Under his shaggy eyebrows, his cold eyes watched her anxiously, as if gazing at one who might wrest secrets from him. His belief in her had increased with every sitting, so that now the old man, gray and bald, in his judicial frock-coat, lost something of his influential manner and became more like a child before his teacher, swayed by every word that fell from her lips.