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“This young woman,” proclaimed the professor’s nasal voice rising above the chatter of the room, “has kindly consented to allow me to try a difficult experiment upon her. From my brief conversation with her just now I feel that she is a peculiary adaptable subject, and I have long been searching for a suitable medium on which to try an experiment of my own.”

David, in the middle of a convincing sentence about Henry Clay, suddenly ceased speaking and wheeled around with a sharp glance across the room, darted first suspiciously at the professor, and then with dismay at his subject. It seemed impossible to connect Miranda with anything as occult as mesmerism. David drew his brows together in a frown. Somehow he didn’t quite like the idea of Miranda lending her strong common sense to what seemed to him a foolish business. Still, Miranda generally knew what she was about, and finding a thimble of course was harmless, if that were all.

“We will first give a simple experiment to see if all goes well,” went on the professor, “and then, if the lady proves herself an apt subject and I will proceed to make an experiment of a deeper nature. Will some one kindly hide the thimble? Mrs. Skinner, you have it, I believe. Yes, thank you, that will do very well.”

It is doubtful if anyone in the room save David, whose eyes were upon Miranda, saw the deft quick motion in which she slid the bandage up from one eye and down again in a trice as if she were merely making it easier on her head; but during that instant Miranda’s one blue eye took in a good deal, as David observed, and she must have seen the thimble being hidden away in Melissa Hartshorn’s luxuriant waving hair which was mounted elaborately on the top of her head. A queer little smile hovered about David Spafford’s lips. Miranda was up to her tricks again, and evidently had no belief whatever in the professor’s ability. She meant to carry out her part as well as the rest had done and not be thought an impossible subject. She was perhaps intending to try an experiment herself on the professor.

“Now, you must yield your will to mine absolutely,” explained the professor as he had done to the others.

“How do you make out to do that?” asked the subject, standing alert and capable, her hands on her hips her chin assertive as usual.

Marcia caught a look of annoyance on Hannah Skinner’s face. She had not expected Miranda to make herself so prominent, and she meant to give her a piece of her mind after it was over, Marcia could easily see that.

“Why, you just relax your mind and your will. Be pliable, as it were, in my hands. Make you mind a blank. Try not to think your own thoughts, but open your mind to obey my slightest thought. Be quiescent. Be pliable, my dear young lady.”

Miranda dropped one arm limply at her side and then the other, and managed to make her whole tidy vivid figure slump gradually into an inertness that was fairly comical in one as self-sufficient as Miranda.

“I’m pliable!” she announced in anything but a limp tone.

“Very good, very good, my dear young lady,” said the oily professor laying a large moist hand on her brow, and taking one of her hands in his other one. “Now, yielf yourself fully!”

Miranda stood limply for a moment and then began to sway gently as she had seen the others do, and to step timidly forth toward Melissa Hartshorn.

The professor cast a triumphant look about the circle of eagerly attentive watchers.

“Very susceptible, very susceptible indeed!” he murmured. “Just as I supposed, unusually susceptible subject!”

David stood watching amusedly, an incredulous twinkle in his eyes. Miranda with studied hesitation was going directly toward the thimble, and when she reached Melissa she stopped as if she had run up against a a wall, and groped uncertainly for her hair. In a moment she had the thimble in her hand.

“You see!” said the professor exultantly. “It is just as I said the young lady is peculiary susceptible, and now we will proceed to a most interesting experiment. We will ask some one in the room to step forward and think of something, anything in the room will do, and the subject will tell what he is thinking about. It will be necessary of course to inform me what the object is. Will this gentleman kindly favor us? I will remove the bandage from the subject’s eyes. It is unnecessary in this experiment.”

Aaron Petrie, rotund and rosy from embarrassment, stepped forward, and Miranda, relieved of her bandage, starred unseeingly straight at him with the look of a sleep-walker and did not move.

“You will perceive that the subject is still under powerful influence,” murmured the professor, noticing Miranda’s dreamy, vacant stare. “That is well. She will be far more susceptible.”

He bent his head to ask Aaron Petrie what he had chosen to think about, and Aaron, still embarrassed, cast his eyes up and down and around and located them on a plate on which a fragment of doughnut remained. A relieved look came into his face and he whispered something back. The professor’s eye travelled to the plate, he bowed cheerfully, and returned to place his right hand on Miranda’s quiescent forehead, and take one of her hands in his, while he looked straight into her apparently unseeing eyes. After a moment of breathless silence, during which the company leaned forward and watched with intense interest, the professor said in a commanding tone: “Now tell the company what this gentleman is thinking about.”

Miranda, her eyes still fixed on space, slowly opened her mouth and spoke, but her voice was drawling and slow, with an unnatural monotony:

“He-is-wishin’-he-hed-‘nuther-dough-nut!” she chanted.

The little assembly broke into astonished, half-awed laughter. The receptivity of Aaron Petrie toward all edibles was a matter of common joke. Even in the face of weird scientific experiments one had to laught about Aaron Petrie’s taste for doughnuts.

“Doughnuts! Doughnuts! Very good,” said the professor, nervously rubbing his hands together. “The gentleman was thinking of the bit of doughnut on yonder plate, and the subject being susceptible has doubtless reached a finer shade of thought than the young gentleman realized when he made his general statement to me.”

The laugh subsided and trailed off into an exclamation of wonder as the cunning professor made Miranda’s original answer a further demonstration of the mysteries of science.

“Now, will this young gentleman give us something?” The professor was still in a trifle nervous. Miranda’s fixed attitude puzzled him. She was not altogether like his other subjects, and he had an uneasy feeling that she might fail him at some critical point. Nevertheless, he was bound to keep on.

Abe Fonda came boldly forward with a swagger, his eyes fixed on the younger Elkanah Wilworth’s two pretty nieces. Miranda’s far-away look did not change. She was having the time of her life, but the best was yet to come.

Abe whispered eargerly in the professor’s ear and his eyes sought the pretty girl’s again with a smile.

The professor bowed and turned to his subject as before, and Miranda, without waiting for a request, chanted out again:

“Abe’s a-thinking-how-purty-Ruth-Ann—Wilworth’s curl—in—the—back—o’—her—neck—is.”

A shout of laughter greeted this, and Abe turned red, while the professor grew still more uneasy. He saw that he was growing in favor with his audience, but the subject was most uncertain, and not at all like other subjects with whom he had experimented. He had a growing suspicion that she was doing some of the work on her own hook and not putting herself absolutely under his influence. It would be as well if he were to go further with her, that he confine his investigation to safe subjects. The dead were safer than the living.

“Well, yes, the young gentleman did mention the younger Miss Wilworth,” he said apologetically. “I hope no offense is taken at the exceedingly—that is to say—direct way the subject has of stating the case.”

“Oh, no offense whatever,”said the sheepish Abe. “It was all quite true I assure you, Miss Wilworth,” and he made a low bow toward the blushing, simpering girl.

Now the professor had one stunt which he loved to pull of in any company where he dared. He would call up the spirit of George Washington and question him concerning the coming election, which not only thrilled the audience but often had great weight with them in changing or strengthening their opinions. He knew that the ordinary subject would easily respond yes or no according to his will, and this remarkable young woman, no matter how original her replies, could scarcely make much trouble in politics, and would not be likely to interpolate her own personality with such a subject of conversation. He decided to try it at once, and all the more because the young woman herself had expressed a desire to see an exhibition of his power to communicate with the other world.

“This young woman,” began the professor in his most suave tones, “has proved herself so apt a subject that I am going to try something that I seldom dare attempt in public without first having experimented for days with the subject. It may work and it may not, I can scarcely be sure without knowing her better; but for the experiment I will endeavor to call up some one from the other world—”

David at this sat up suddenly, his eyes searching the blank ones of Miranda. It troubled him to have a member of his household put herself even for a short time under this slippery looking man’s influence, and this tampering with the mysterious he did not like. There was no telling what effect it might have upon Miranda, though he had always hereofore thought her the most practical and sensible person he knew. He could not quite understand her willingness to submit to this nonsense. Ought he to interfere? He was to blame himself for having talked to her so much about the subject. He cleared his throat and almost spoke, his eyes still upon the blank expression of the girl opposite, supposed to be in a sort of trance. Suddenly, as he watched her, one eye gave a slow, solemn wink at him. The action was so comical and so wholly Miranda—like that he almost laughed aloud, and settled back in his seat to enjoy what was to be forthcoming. Miranda was not in a trance then, but was fully and wholly herself and enjoying the hoax she was playing alike on the audience and the professor. Miranda was a witch, there was no mistaking it, and an artist of her kind. David wished he were sitting next to Marcia that he might relieve her mind, for he saw she looked troubled. He tried to signal to her by a smile and was surprised to receive an answering assurance as if Marcia too had discovered something.

The professor now stood forth making some slow rhythmical motions with his hands on the girl’s forehead and in front of her face. He was just about to speak his directions to her when she rose slowly staring straight ahead of her at the open kitchen door, her eyes strained and wild, her face impressive with a weird solemnity.

“I—see—a—dead—man!” she exclaimed sepulchrally, and the professor rubbed his hands and wafted a few more thought-waves toward this remarkably apt subject.

Had Miranda arranged it with the draft of the kitchen window that just at this stage of the game the kitchen door should come slowly, noisily shut? A distinct shudder went around the company, but the girl continued to gaze raptly toward the door.

“Ask him what are his politics, please,” commanded the professor, endeavoring to cast a little cheer upon the occasion.

“He—says—he—was—shot—down—by—Tay—lor’s—woods.”

An audible murmur of horror went around the room and everybody sat up and took double notice.

“Twelve—years—ago—” went on the monotonous voice in a high strident key.

“Enoch Taylor, I’ll be gormed!” ejaculated old Mr. Heath, resting his horny hands on his knees and leaning forward with bulging eyes.

David could not help but notice that Lawrance Billings, who was sitting opposite to him, started nervously and looked furtively around the company.

“He—says—to—tell—you—his—murderer—is—in—this—room” –chanted Miranda as though she had no personal interest in the matter whatever.

In this room! The thought flashed like lightning from face to face—“Who is it?” David found his eyes riveted on the pale face of the young man opposite who seemed unable to take his eyes from Miranda’s but sat white and horrified with a fascinated stare like a bird under the gaze of a cat.

“He—must—confess—to-night—before—the—clock—strikes—the—hour—of—midnight”—went on the voice—“or—a—curse—will—come—on—him—and—he—will—die!”

There was a tense stillness in the room that filled evertbody with horror, as if the dead man had suddenly stepped into sight and charged them all with his murder. They looked from one to another with sudden suspicion in their eyes. The oily professor stood aghast at the work he had wrought unaware.

“Oh, now, see here,” he began with an attempt to break the tensity of the moment, “don’t let this thing break up the good cheer. We’ll just bring this lady back to herself again and dismiss the deceased for to-night. He doubtless died with some such thing on his mind, or else he was insane and keeps the same notions he had when he left this mortal frame. Now don’t let this worry you in the least. There isn’t anybody in this room could commit a murder if he tried, of course; why, you’re all ladies and gentlemen—”

All the time the oily anxious man was making wild passes in front of Miranda’s face and trying to press her forehead with his hands, and wake her up, but Miranda just marched slowly, solemnly, staringly ahead toward the kitchen door, and everybody in the room but the professor watched her, fascinated.

She turned when she reached the kitchen door, faced the room once more, and staring back upon them all uttered once more her curse.

“Enoch—Taylor—says—ef—you—don’t—confess—to-night—before—midnight—you’ll—die—and—he—ain’t goin’—to—leave—you—till—you—confess.”

She jabbed her finger straight forward blindly and it went through the roached hair on Lawrence Billings’s shrinking head and pointed straight at nothing, but Lawrence Billings jumped and shrieked. In the confusion Miranda dropped apparently senseless in the kitchen doorway; but just before she dropped she gave David another slow, solemn wink with one eye.