Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/296

 ceived through the medium of the ouija board, but be never had seen the mysterious force which Mrs. Taylor referred to as her " control " evidence itself in any such fashion as this.

With her lank six feet sunk upon the side bench and her supine hands lying limply in her lap, Mrs. Taylor's chest was rising and falling in convulsive heaves; the nostrils of her large flat nose were dilated, and her wide mouth, with its loose colorless lips, was slightly agape. Her eyes were open and staring fixedly straight ahead. Mrs. Taylor was in a trance.

Teeters had long since given over trying to explain what he did not understand, but in a vague way he re- garded Mrs. Taylor as an unconscious fakir, whose spiritual communications bore the ear-marks of some- thing she had learned in a quite ordinary way.

There was, however, nothing of charlatanry in her present state. Teeters was convinced of that. She caught and held the gaze of MuUendore's dull eyes. Suddenly she stiffened out like a corpse galvanized into life by an electric charge, then again sank back, and said thickly between labored breaths :

" It is turgid — dark — all is confusion - — spirits are assembling — they are spirits of unrest — there is no peace — no happiness. There is horror in every dis- torted face — they have met — violent deaths — they want to talk — they clamor to be heard — they — "

" It's a lie! " Mullendore's whisper was shrill, aspir- ate. "There ain't no other world! There ain't no comin' back! "

" Clouds roll up — " she went on, " clouds of red smoke — they shut the spirits out — new ones come — dim at first — but I can't see — yet. Wait! "

The woman's stare seemed to carry her through and