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"Certainly not"

"Just go round the roo you like"

"I'ood Then kindly watch that pencil"

Thehis eyes steadily upon the little wooden cylinder lying, like any other pencil, on the top of the table Laurie glanced once at hiain There it lay, co happened at all, except that from the intentness of the elder man there seemed once more to radiate out that curious air of silence that Laurie was beginning to knoell--that silence that seemed impenetrable to the coether independent of the room, the curtained s, the dull furniture; and the second time he looked back at the pencil he was almost certain that some movement had just taken place with it

He resolutely fixed his eyes upon it, bending every faculty he possessed into one tense attitude of attention And a moment later he could not resist a suddenof breath; for there, before his very eyes, the pencil tilted, very hesitatingly and quiveringly, as if pulled by a spider's thread He heard, too, the tiny tap of its fall

He glanced at the medium, who jerked his head impatiently, as if for silence Then once more the silence came down

A er the possibility of a doubt

There before the boy's eyes, as he stared, white-faced, with parted lips, the pencil rose, hesitated, quivered; but, instead of falling back again, hung so for a le with the plane of the table in an entirely i on its point in a quarter circle, and after one ht, remained poised one instant, then fell with a sudden movement, rolled across the table and dropped on the carpet

Thebreath

"There," he said; and san the other

"Yes, I know," said the , isn't it? and indeed it's not as easy as it looks I wasn't at all sure--"

"But, good Lord, I saw--"

"Of course you did; but how do you know you weren't hypnotized?"