Further wails of the frightened and repentant one were lost in an ecstatic shout of laughter from Mr. Cabot. Martha slowly shook her head.

"Well," she observed, dryly, "I guess likely we'd better go, hadn't we? If it is as bad as all that I should say we had, sure and certain. Primmie Cash, I'm ashamed of you. Mr. Cabot, we'll finish our talk when we come back. What under the sun you can possibly mean I declare I don't understand. . . . But, there, it will keep. Come, Mr. Bangs."

She led the way from the sitting room. Cabot followed her and, staggering slightly and with a hand still pressed to his forehead, Galusha followed them. He was saved for the time, he realized that, but for such a very short time. For an hour or two he was to hang in the air and then would come the inevitable crash. When they returned home, after the seance was over, Martha would question Cousin Gussie, Cousin Gussie would answer, then he would be questioned and--and the end would come. Martha would know him for what he was. As they emerged from the Phipps' door into the damp chill and blackness of that October evening, Galusha Bangs looked hopelessly up and down and for the first time in months yearned for Egypt, to be in Egypt, in Abyssinia, in the middle of the great Sahara--anywhere except where he was and where he was fated to be.

The windows of the light keeper's cottage were ablaze as they drew near. Overhead the great stream of radiance from the lantern in the tower shot far out. There was almost no wind, and the grumble of the surf at the foot of the bluff was a steady bass monotone.

Zacheus, who had waited to walk over with them, was in a fault- finding state of mind. It developed that he could not attend the meeting in the parlor; his superior had ordered that he "tend light."

"The old man says I hadn't no business comin' to the other sea-ants thing," said Zach. "Says him and me ain't both supposed never to leave the light alone. I cal'late he's right, but that don't make it any better. There's a whole lot of things that's right that hadn't ought to be. I presume likely it's right enough for you to play that mouth organ of yours, Posy. They ain't passed no law against it yet. But--"

"Oh, be still, Zach Bloomer! You're always talkin' about my playin' the mouth organ. I notice you can't play anything, no, nor sing neither."

"You're right, Pansy Blossom. But the difference between you and me is that I know I can't. . . . Hey? Why, yes, Martha, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if the fog came in any time. If it does that means I've got to tend foghorn as well as light. Godfreys!"

Before they opened the side door of the Hallett home, the buzz of voices in the parlor was distinctly audible. Lulie heard the door open and met them in the dining room. She was looking anxious and disturbed. Martha drew her aside and questioned her concerning her father. Lulie glanced toward the parlor door and then whispered:

"I don't know, Martha. Father seems queer to-night, awfully queer. I can't make him out."

"Queer? In what way? He is always nervous and worked up before these silly affairs, isn't he?"

"Yes, but I don't mean that, exactly. He has been that way for over a week. But for the last two days he has been--well, different. He seems to be troubled and--and suspicious."

"Suspicious? Suspicious of what?"

"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.

"What's the matter, Galusha?" he whispered. "Brace up, old man! you look as if you were seeing spooks already. Not sick--faint, or anything like that?"

Galusha blushed. "Eh?" he queried. "Oh--oh, no, no. Quite so, really. Eh? Ah--yes."

Cabot chuckled. "That's a comprehensive answer, at any rate," he observed. "Come now, be my Who's-Who. For example, what is the name of the female under the hat like a--a steamer basket?"

Galusha looked. "That is Miss Hoag, the--ah--medium," he said.

"Oh, I see. Did the spirits build that hat for her?"

Miss Hoag's headgear was intrinsically the same she had worn at the former seance, although the arrangement of the fruit, flowers, sprays and other accessories was a trifle different. The red cherries, for example, no longer bobbed at the peak of the roof; they now hung jauntily from the rear eaves, so to speak. The purple grapes had also moved and peeped coyly from a thicket of moth-eaten rosebuds. The wearer of this revamped millinery triumph seemed a bit nervous, even anxious, so it seemed to Martha Phipps, who, like Cabot and Galusha, was looking at her. Marietta kept hitching in her seat, pulling at her gown, and glancing from time to time at the gloomy countenance of Captain Jethro, who, Miss Phipps also noticed, was regarding her steadily and slowly pulling at his beard. This regard seemed to add to Miss Hoag's uneasiness.

The majority of those present were staring at the senior partner of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot. The object of the attention could not help becoming aware of it.

"What are they all looking at me for?" he demanded, under his breath.

Galusha did not hear the question, but Primmie did, and answered it.

"They don't know who you be," she whispered.

"What of it? I don't know who they are, either."

Miss Cash sniffed. "Humph!" she declared, "you wouldn't know much worth knowin' if you did--the heft of 'em. . . . Oh, my savin' soul, it's a-goin' to begin! Where's my mouth organ?"

But, to her huge disappointment, her services as mouth organist were not to be requisitioned this time. Captain Hallett, taking charge of the gathering, made an announcement.

"The melodeon's been fixed," he said, "and Miss Black's kind enough to say she'll play it for us. Take your places, all hands. Come on, now, look alive! Tut, tut, tut! Abe Hardin', for heaven's sakes, can't you pick up your moorin's, or what does ail you? Come to anchor! Set down!"

Mr. Harding was, apparently, having trouble in sitting down. He made several nervous and hurried attempts, but none was successful. His wife begged, in one of her stage whispers, to be informed if he'd been "struck deef." "Don't you hear the cap'n talkin' to