“Nonsense!” The amazed captain shouted the word.  “What are you talkin’ about?  ’Twan’t you she said.  ’Twas that Howard swab.  He’s been hangin’ around Lulie for more ’n a year.”

“Ah—­pardon me, Captain Hallett, but really I must make my point.  It could not have been Mr. Howard to whom the—­ah—­control referred.  Mr. Howard is somewhat dark, perhaps, but he is not small.  I am both dark and small.  And I am here, whereas Mr. Howard apparently is not.  And I am, beyond question, an outsider.  Therefore—­”

“Nonsense, I tell you!  She said Nelson Howard was in this house.”

“Pardon me, pardon me, Captain Hallett.  She said a small, dark man, an outsider, was in this house.  She mentioned no names.  You mentioned no names, did you, Miss—­ah—­Hoag?”

Marietta, thus unexpectedly appealed to, gasped, swallowed, turned red and stammered that she didn’t know’s she did; adding hastily that she never remembered nothin’ of what she said in the trance state.  After this she swallowed again and observed that she didn’t see why she couldn’t have that drink of water.

“So you see, Captain Hallett,” went on Mr. Bangs, with the same gentle persistence, “being the only person present answering the description given by the medium I feel somewhat—­ah—­distressed.  I must insist that I am unjustly accused.  I must ask Miss Phipps here and your daughter herself to say whether or not my conduct toward Miss Lulie has not been quite—­ah—­harmless and without—­ ah—­malevolence.  I shall be glad to leave it to them.”

Of the pair to whom this appeal for judgment was made Martha Phipps alone heeded it.  Lulie, still white and trembling, was intent only upon her father.  But Martha rose to the occasion with characteristic promptness.

“Of course, Mr. Bangs,” she declared, “you’ve behaved just as nice as any one could be in this world.  I could hardly believe my ears when Marietta said you were an evil influence towards Lulie.  You ought to be careful about sayin’ such things, Marietta.  Why, you never met Mr. Bangs before this evenin’.  How could you know he was an evil influence?”

Miss Hoag, thus attacked from an unexpected quarter, was thrown still more out of mental poise.  “I never said he was one,” she declared, wildly.  “I only just said there was a—­a—­ I don’t know what I said.  Anyhow I never said it, ‘twas my control talkin’.  I’ll leave it to ’Phelia Beebe.  You know I don’t know what I’m sayin’ when I’m in the trance state, don’t you, ’Phelia?  Anyhow, all I said was. . . .  Oh, ’Phelia,” wildly, “why don’t you help me out? . . .  And—­and I’ve asked no less’n four mortal times for that drink of water.  I—­I—­ Oh, oh—­”

She became hysterical.  The circle ceased to be a circle and became a series of agitated groups, all talking at once.  Mr. Bloomer seized the opportunity to turn up the wick of another lamp.  Lulie, clinging to her father’s arm, led him toward a chair in a secluded corner.