Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/260

 by. Another is present; some one here has been thinking about him; not consciously; but wishing him all the while underneath. He is a brown-faced man with straight, black hair; an Indian—"

Ethel sat back, relaxed from the tension of the minute before, dulled, baffled and disappointed. She had been told that the spirit of her father had been in the room; she had been told that he had held his hands out to her; that he had almost touched her; but she had undergone no sensation to correspond with such a conception. Expectancy of feeling rather than feeling itself had put the strain upon her; but nothing had suggested her father's presence but a vague, general description of him which any one might have made up from her own experience; there had been, in addition, only the letter L which, besides referring to London—as she had suggested—might refer to Loutrelle or Lucas or to a hundred other names.

"Some one on earth plane asked for him before; he tried to come. He wants Eva to say he did come; but not with Eva."

"Can he give a name?" Barney inquired.

"He makes a cross," said the voice.

"A church cross?"

"No; two marks; he means on earth plane, 'I was an ignorant man. I did not write name. I made cross.' He did not speak except in his own tongue. Now he does not need to speak in tongues."

"Does he still understand Indian?" Barney asked.

"He nods, yes; of course."

Barney put the next question in a strange word, and Ethel, glancing at his pad, saw that he wrote as his question:

"Otchipwem?"