“I don’t know.  Of every one.”

“Humph!  Well, if he would only begin to get suspicious of Marietta and her spirit chasers I should feel like givin’ three cheers.  But I suppose those are exactly the ones he isn’t suspicious of.”

Lulie again glanced toward the parlor door.

“I am not so sure,” she said.  “It seemed to me that he wasn’t as cordial to them as usual when they came to-night.  He keeps looking at Marietta and pulling his beard and scowling, the way he does when he is puzzled and troubled.  I’m not sure, but I think something came in the mail yesterday noon and another something again to-day which may be the cause of his acting so strangely.  I don’t know what they were, he wouldn’t answer when I asked him, but I saw him reading a good deal yesterday afternoon.  And then he came into the kitchen where I was, took the lid off the cookstove and put a bundle of printed pages on the fire.  I asked him what he was doing and he snapped at me that he was burning the words of Satan or something of that sort.”

“And couldn’t you save enough of the—­er—­Old Scratch’s words to find out what the old boy was talkin’ about?”

“No.  There was a hot fire.  But to-day, when the second package came, I caught a glimpse of the printing on the wrapper.  It was from The Psychical Research Society; I think that was it.  There is such a society, isn’t there?”

“I believe so.  I . . .  Ssh!  Careful, here he is.”

Captain Jethro strode across the parlor threshold.  He glared beneath his heavy eyebrows at the couple.

“Lulie,” he growled, “don’t you know you’re keepin’ the meetin’ waitin’?  You are, whether you know it or not.  Martha Phipps, come in and set down.  Come on, lively now!”

Martha smiled.

“Cap’n Jeth,” she said, “you remind me of father callin’ in the cat.  You must think you’re aboard your old schooner givin’ orders.  All right, I’ll obey ’em.  Ay, ay, sir!  Come, Lulie.”

They entered the parlor, whither Galusha, Mr. Cabot and Primmie had preceded them and were already seated.  The group in the room was made up about as on the occasion of the former seance, but it was a trifle larger.  The tales of the excitement on the evening when the light keeper threatened to locate and destroy the “small, dark outsider” had spread and had attracted a few additional and hopeful souls.  Mr. Obed Taylor, driver of the Trumet bake-cart, and a devout believer, had been drawn from his home village; Miss Tamson Black, her New Hampshire visit over, was seated in the front row; Erastus Beebe accompanied his sister Ophelia.  The Hardings, Abel and Sarah B., were present and accounted for, and so, too, was Mrs. Hannah Peters.

Galusha Bangs, seated between Miss Cash and the immensely interested Cousin Gussie, gazed dully about the circle.  He saw little except a blur of faces; his thoughts were elsewhere, busy in dreadful anticipation of the scene he knew he must endure when he and his cousin and Miss Phipps returned to the house of the latter.  He did not dare look in her direction, fearing to see once more upon her face the expression of suspicion which he had already seen dawning there—­suspicion of him, Galusha Bangs.  He sighed, and the sigh was so near a groan that his relative was startled.