died. But in those regions there existed not only the souls of the dead who lived in an environment and under conditions at which we could not ever so faintly conjecture, but other spirits, some good, some evil. Every good impulse that came into the hearts of men, came from over there; so, too, did every evil impulse that would blight, if it could, the garden of God. And who knew whether the man who by that strange faculty which Archie possessed of opening the doors of his subliminal self, through which, as he averred, these messages came, might not open them to other and evil things? If possession by an evil spirit was a psychical possibility (and certainly it was not more fantastically strange than such phenomena as Archie could produce) would it not be thus, and in no other way, that the evil possession would enter? Yet in childhood Archie had, in ignorance and in white defencelessness, opened more than once the door of his soul, and no harm surely had come to him. Was she being unreasonable, full of fear where no fear was, twittering with groundless and superstitious fancies?
There was yet another side to the question. If the spirits of the dead could indeed return, and speak of what they knew, was it not worth while running some risk on the chance of the wonders they might tell of the existence which now was theirs? Whatever else might be of interest in human life, supreme over all was any hint or fragment of information about the timeless and everlasting day that lay beyond the dawnings and settings of the sun. Nay, more: if to any one was given this wonderful gift by means of which voices could reach him from beyond the veil, was it not his duty to use this endowment for the enlightenment and consolation of those who mourned and who sat in darkness? God would never have bestowed so spiritual a gift on any, if He did not mean it to be used, The Christian Faith taught that the dead were alive in
