Following Mrs. Mercer-Laporte’s recommendation he began with Mr. Muddock. But Mr. Muddock turned out to be an illiterate and frowzy prophet, too clearly calculated for the need of ‘poor sweet cooks and housemaids’ to be of much assistance in the quests of better-educated people. However, after a brief spasm of disgust, Kingston decided to continue his enterprise, and gradually found himself involved in the higher spiritualistic circles. At first he had to be content with the ordinary hireling mediums, but as time went by, and his appetite became whetted by the glimpses of apparent truth that he gathered here and there amid thick and more or less palpable frauds, he began to be aware that there existed, behind the common world of second-rate believers, a sort of upper world in touch with the Beyond. To anyone with money the lower sphere of materialization was open, and the meetings of Mr. Muddock and his confrères were nightly crowded with the lonely and the bereaved, eager for a moment’s conversation with the lost beloved. But these interviews never satisfied Kingston, and, as he began to discern the higher possibilities behind, he secretly strained every nerve to enter that set of his own people which held, or proclaimed that it held, genuine and constant communication with those ‘that have passed over.’ The task was not altogether easy, and had to be cautiously ensued, for fear of waking the suspicions and the disapproval of Gundred. Kingston found himself despising himself for the cowardice of such a course, until he realized that what he was aiming at involved no sort of real disloyalty to Gundred, and that any concealment he might practise was in the interest of her peace and happiness. Satisfying himself obstinately with this rather jejune and sophistical excuse, he pursued his way, and at last found himself admitted to the upper section of the spiritualistic world.