Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/366

 dead, with power to perform. Yes, she would come back!

"I am going to tell the account of Lucas Cullen and his family and of myself and my son," said the voice clearly and steadily. "It begins far back; yet is brief enough; and includes that which you have just heard and the effect of which on him you have seen. That, I shall explain. Sit down, every one, and be silent."

So far, even to Barney, the voice seemed to proceed from no located source. He had believed his mother present among the veiled women at the left of the rows where the lights had gone out; but such was the quality of her tone that it seemed not enunciated from one spot but pervasive throughout the room. No one else seemed able to place it; those who attempted looked first here, then there and about. Very probably, by this time, there were some who realized that not a fleshless soul, but a woman was speaking; yet, surely, the woman was Agnes Cullen who, after having vanished for half a year, had returned to deal a blow—whose nature she was about to reveal—to her enemy, Lucas Cullen, and probably to explain the reason for that long-known enmity and some of the secrets of her life.

Every one was silent.

"The beginning," continued the voice, "was when I was a child in the Michigan forest. My father was the man whose spirit just now was here holding the Book of Mormon—whose cabin Lucas Cullen entered to quarrel with him and kick the Book of Mormon from the doorway. My father was named Drane—Richard Drane. He was born in Joseph Smith's colony in Illinois; and when they were driven out, his