“There is the possibility of one mind unconsciously suggesting to another mind,” Mrs. Grantly was saying; but through Lute’s mind was trooping her father on his great roan war-horse.  Now he was leading his men.  She saw him on lonely scouts, or in the midst of the yelling, Indians at Salt Meadows, when of his command he returned with one man in ten.  And in the picture she had of him, in the physical semblance she had made of him, was reflected his spiritual nature, reflected by her worshipful artistry in form and feature and expression—­his bravery, his quick temper, his impulsive championship, his madness of wrath in a righteous cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, and his chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals primitive as the days of knighthood.  And first, last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the face of him the hot passion and quickness of deed that had earned for him the name “Fighting Dick Curtis.”

“Let me put it to the test,” she heard Mrs. Grantly saying.  “Let Miss Story try Planchette.  There may be a further message.”

“No, no, I beg of you,” Aunt Mildred interposed.  “It is too uncanny.  It surely is wrong to tamper with the dead.  Besides, I am nervous.  Or, better, let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your experiments.  That will be the best way, and you can tell me in the morning.”  Mingled with the “Good-nights,” were half-hearted protests from Mrs. Grantly, as Aunt Mildred withdrew.

“Robert can return,” she called back, “as soon as he has seen me to my tent.”

“It would be a shame to give it up now,” Mrs. Grantly said.  “There is no telling what we are on the verge of.  Won’t you try it, Miss Story?”

Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on the board she was conscious of a vague and nameless fear at this toying with the supernatural.  She was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as her uncle had said, was mediaeval.  Yet she could not shake off the instinctive fear that arose in her—­man’s inheritance from the wild and howling ages when his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid of the dark and personified the elements into things of fear.

But as the mysterious influence seized her hand and sent it meriting across the paper, all the unusual passed out of the situation and she was unaware of more than a feeble curiosity.  For she was intent on another visioning—­this time of her mother, who was also unremembered in the flesh.  Not sharp and vivid like that of her father, but dim and nebulous was the picture she shaped of her mother—­a saint’s head in an aureole of sweetness and goodness and meekness, and withal, shot through with a hint of reposeful determination, of will, stubborn and unobtrusive, that in life had expressed itself mainly in resignation.

Lute’s hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly was already reading the message that had been written.

“It is a different handwriting,” she said.  “A woman’s hand.  ‘Martha,’ it is signed.  Who is Martha?”