"This is one way. They write sometimes, and sometimes they speak through a megaphone; sometimes they materialize a face or a hand." He remained in profound thought for a few moments, then starting up, spoke with decision: "You are tired. Go to bed. We'll have plenty of time to take up these matters to-morrow. Please feel at home here and stay as long as you wish." A little later he took Victor to his room, and as they stood there he remarked, "Of course, all this may be and probably is mind-reading and ventriloquism--subconscious, of course." "But the writing," said Victor. "You must see that. That is the weirdest thing she does. It is baffling." "My boy, the whole universe is baffling to me," his host replied, and into his voice came that tone of tragic weariness which affected the youth like a strain of solemn music. "The older I grow the more senseless, hopelessly senseless, human life appears; but I must not say such things to you. Good-night." "Good-night," responded Victor, with swelling throat. "We owe you a great deal." "Don't speak of it!" the lawyer commanded, and closed the door behind him. Victor dropped into a chair. What a day this had been! Within twenty-four hours he had seen and loved the dream-face of Altair and had been blown upon by the winds from the vast chill and empty regions of space. He had resented Leo's voice in the night, but had returned to her in the light of the morning. On the dreamy lagoon he had been her lover again, pulling at the oar with savage joy, and on the grass in the sunlight he had been the man unafraid and victorious. Then came the hurried return, the visit to the court, the rescue of his mother--and here now he lay in the charity bed of his mother's lawyer! "Truly I am being hurried," he said; and recalling Miss Aiken's final menacing remark, he added: "And if that girl and her brother can do it mother will be sent to prison." Much as he feared these accusing witnesses, he acknowledged a kind of fierce beauty in Florence Aiken's face. As he lay thus, thinking deeply yet drowsily upon his problems, he heard a faint ticking sound beneath his head. It was too regular and persistent to be a chance creaking of the cloth, and he rose and shook the pillow to dislodge the insect which he imagined might have flown in at the window. The ticking continued. "I wonder if that _is_ a fly?" The ticking seemed to reply, "No," by means of one decided rap. To test it, he asked, "Are you a spirit?" The tick counted one, two, three--"_Yes._" "Some one to speak to me?" _Tick, tick, tick_--"Yes." The answer was so plainly intelligent that the boy, silent with amazement, not unmixed with fear, lay for a few minutes in puzzled inaction. At length he asked, "Who is it--Father?" "Tick"--No. "_Grandfather?_" "_No._" He hesitated before asking the next question. "Is it Altair?" "_No._" He thought again. "Is it Walter Bartol?" The answer was joyously instant. "_Yes, yes, yes!_"