"In answer to this request, when the medium returned I got these pertinent words: '_I was not a disappointment to myself, but I was at a point where nerve force failed me._' This was signed '_Ernest_,' and was accompanied by another sketchy bar of music. It all looked like a real attempt to give me what I had asked for, and yet it was the kind of reply that might have been made by the medium had she known the history of my musical friend, or had she been able to take it out of my mind." "Even that is a violent assumption to me," remarked Miller. "So it is to me," I answered. "I can't really believe in thought transmission, and yet-- I then asked for the signature of the staff, and a small '_c_' was written in the bar above, and another bar was added. Now on the slates there came (with every evidence of eager haste) intimate questions concerning Alexander's family: '_Is my wife cared for?_' and the like. To these I replied orally. I must tell you that all along the whisper spoke of Alexander's wife as 'Mary,' which was wrong, although it was close to the actual name. Also, after I began to speak of him as 'E. A.' the messages were all signed in that manner, all of which would seem to argue a little confusion in the psychic's mind. "A little later, _while I held the slate myself_, the mysterious 'force' wrote, '_I thank you for what you have done. I have been told my mind is clear_,' which was particularly full of meaning to me, for the reason that my friend's mind was clouded toward the close of his life." "All of which proves nothing," insisted Miller. "Your friend, if I conjecture rightly, was a well-known man, and the psychic could have read, and probably did read, all about his illness in the public press." "It may be so. About this time I began to hear a faint whisper, which _seemed_ to come from a point a little to the right of and a foot or two above the psychic's lips. This, she informed me, was the voice of 'Dr. Cooke,' her guide. I could catch only a few of the whispered words, and Mrs. Hartley was forced to repeat them. 'Dr. Cooke,' thus interpreted, said: '_Your friend Alexander is present, and overjoyed to talk with you._' The conversation went on with both 'Dr. Cooke' and the psychic standing between the alleged spirit and myself; but even then I must admit that 'Alexander's' queries and answers were to the point. "Under what seemed like test conditions I got two more bars of music, both much more definitive in form than the others; and these, the whisper declared, were from the third movement of the '---- Sonata.' This message was accompanied by a curious little device like the letter _C_ with a line drawn through it, and I said to myself: 'If this should prove to be a mark which "Ernest" used in signing his manuscript, something like Whistler's butterfly, I shall have a fine test of thought transmission.'