“But his hair _was_ beautiful,” Abbie persisted; “and he said it used to be straight as a poker, but the spirits curled it.” “Why, Miss Abbie,” cried Lucy, “I could see the little straight ends sticking out of the curls, that come when you do your hair up on irons. I’ve frizzed my hair too many times not to know _them_.” “But, Lucy,” said Abbie, in a low, shocked voice, “didn’t you feel _something_ when he put on those handcuffs and sat before the cabinet in the dark, and his control spoke, and we saw the hands? What do you think of that?” “I think it was him all the time,” said Lucy, doggedly. “But, Lucy, _why_?” “Finger-nails were dirty just the same,” said Lucy. Nor was there any shaking her. But Abbie, under ordinary circumstances the most fastidious of women, had not noted the finger-nails; one witching sentence had captured her. The moment he took her hand he had started violently. “Excuse me, madam,” said he, “but are you not a medium _yourself_?” “No—at least, I never was supposed to be,” fluttered Abbie, blushing. “Then, madam, you don’t perhaps realize that you yourself possess marvellous psychic power. I never saw any one who had so much, when it had not been developed.” To-day Abbie ground her teeth and wrung her hands in an impotent agony of rage, remembering her pleasure. He would not take any money; no, he said, there had been too much happiness for him in meeting such a favorite of the spiritual influences as she. “But you will come again,” he pleaded; “only don’t ask me to take money for such a great privilege. _You_ caynt see the invisible guardians that hover around you!” His refusal of her gold piece completed his victory over Abbie’s imagination. She was sure he could not be a cheat, since he would not be paid. She did come again; she came many times, always with Lucy, who grew more and more suspicious, but could not make up her mind to expose Abbie’s folly to her people. “Think of all the things she gives me!” argued Lucy. “Miss Abbie’s always been a kind of stray sheep in the family; they are all kind of hard on her. I can’t bear to be the one to get her into trouble.” So Lucy’s conscience squirmed in silence until the fortune-teller persuaded Abbie to allow him to throw her into a trance. The wretched woman in the carriage cowered back farther into the shade, living over that ghastly hour when Lucy at her elbow was as far away from her helpless soul as if at the poles. How his blue eyes glowed! How the flame in them contracted to a glittering spark, like the star-tip of the silver wand, waving and curving and interlacing its dazzling flashes before her until her eyeballs ached! How of a sudden the star rested, blinking at her between his eyes, and she looked; she must look at it, though her will, her very self, seemed to be sucked out of her into the gleaming whirlpool of that star!