times stronger than that of any living human being that ever tenanted a body on this terraqueous globe of ours--beings perfectly intelligent, powerful, invisible, and totally conscienceless, wherein is a great difference from human beings. “The lady came around in a few minutes, and I frankly stated my opinion to her. It was new and startling. ‘Not human spirits--yet intelligent? An intelligent thing--and guileful? It is dreadful! Horrible! What, then, is that Thing? Angels? No! Devils? If so, whence come they? Why? For what end?’ “These were terrible questions; and we talked about the matter, the lady and I, as we sat in the back office, near the fire, for it was very cold; and she sat leaning on the desk near the window, and I sat near the door between the offices, my back nearly touching it. The outer door, which opened on the stair-landing, was closed, and a wire was so attached to it that it could not be opened, or even the latch be raised, without touching a spring that instantly rung a bell that was suspended directly over my head in the rear office. I used this rear office as a reading-room and laboratory, and I frequently became so absorbed in my reading or chemistry, that nothing less than the ringing of that bell would suffice to divert my attention. “And there and thus we sat and talked for more than three long hours. The strong-minded woman’s soul had at last really been aroused; while I once more brought to the surface my Rosicrucian lore. In thought and speech we traversed a score of conjectural worlds and labyrinths of Being; until, at last: ‘Are there, really, any intelligent, but viewless beings, other than man, in all the broad universe--I mean other than man as he is here, and disembodied likewise?--that’s the question,’ said the lady by the desk. “‘_Of course there are!_ MYRIADS!’ said a clear, manly voice in the room, right straight from the centre of the triangle formed by the desk, the door and the southern wall of the office! It was not the lady who thus replied to her own question! It was not I who spoke; nor, strange as it afterwards appeared, did the circumstance strike me as being at all out of the common. And, therefore, without an instant’s hesitation, I rejoined to the observation of the speaker, whom I subsequently remember to have observed was a thin, strange-looking, scrawny, shrivelled little old man, with the queerest possible little sharp grey eyes. He looked half frozen, and acted so, for he advanced toward some shelves and proceeded very leisurely to warm his hands over my laboratory furnace, between the door and wall. The lady appeared no more surprised than myself at the inexplicable presence of this singular intruder. “‘I am not so sure of that,’ I replied, in answer to the words uttered by the strange old man--‘I am not so sure that there _are_ such beings in existence.’