In the middle of that sentence I laid down my pen.  A consciousness, sudden and distinct, came to me that I was not alone in that bright little silent room.  Yet to mortal eyes alone I was.  I pushed away my writing and looked about.  The warm air was empty of outline; the curtains were undisturbed; the little recess under the library table held nothing but my own feet; there was no sound but the ordinary rap-rapping on the floor, to which I had by this time become so accustomed that often it passed unnoticed.  I rose and examined the room thoroughly, until quite satisfied that I was its only visible occupant; then sat down again.  The rappings had meantime become loud and impatient.

I had learned that very week from Miss Fellows the spiritual alphabet with which she was in the habit of “communicating with her dead mother.”  I had never asked her, nor had she proposed, to use it herself for my benefit.  I had meant to try all other means of investigation before resorting to it.  Now, however being alone, and being perplexed and annoyed by my sense of having invisible company, I turned and spelled out upon the table, so many raps to a letter till the question was complete:—­

“What do you want of me?”

Instantly the answer came rapping back:—­

“Stretch down your hand.”

I put my fingers under the table, and I felt, as indubitably as I ever felt a touch in my life, the grasp of a warm, human hand.

I added to the broken paragraph in the letter to my friend a brief account of the occurrence, and reiterated my entreaties that he would come at his earliest convenience to my house.  He was an Episcopal clergyman, by the way, and I considered that his testimony would uphold my fast-sinking character for veracity among my townspeople.  I began to have an impression that this dilemma in which I found myself was a pretty serious one for a man of peaceable disposition and honest intentions to be in.

About this time I undertook to come to a little better understanding with Miss Fellows.  I took her away alone, and having tried my best not to frighten the life out of her by my grave face, asked her seriously and kindly to tell me whether she supposed herself to have any connection with the phenomena in my house.  To my surprise she answered promptly that she thought she had.  I repressed a whistle, and “asked for information.”

“The presence of a medium renders easy what would otherwise be impossible,” she replied.  “I offered to go away, Mr. Hotchkiss, in the beginning.”

I assured her that I had no desire to have her go away at present, and begged her to proceed.

“The Influences in the house are strong, as I have said before,” she continued, looking through me and beyond me with her vacant eyes.  “Something is wrong.  They are never at rest.  I hear them.  I feel them.  I see them.  They go up and down the stairs with me.  I find them in my room.  I see them gliding about.  I see them standing now, with their hands almost upon your shoulders.”