that she had not been away in the realm of the dead; but his brain was not functioning rationally. He knew she was returned in the flesh; yet his alarm endowed her with the advantages of association with the dead of whom she spoke and who, a few minutes before, the Voice had identified as present before him,—Richard Drane, the Mormon, and now Henry Laylor!
Lucas Cullen sat very stiff and still in his chair with his son's wife and his grandson on one side; on the other side, in the seat which Myra's acquaintance had given to Barney Loutrelle, sat the son of Agnes Drane. About them, every one sat or stood very quietly, watching intently Agnes Drane and Lucas Cullen and his daughter-in-law and his grandson and his lawyer and the stranger next him who had prevented his escape and who had asked, the third time, for Mrs. Oliver Cullen. In the very center of the room the medium, Mrs. Brand, had come out of the trance, easily and without demonstration; discovering that some extraordinary event was in progress, she remained seated as an observer.
"Originally Lucas Cullen told the lie about Richard Drane and Laylor's wife only to harm the man who had made him trouble and to injure a rival; for Henry Laylor had built a mill only a few miles from Cullen's near a little place called Galilee; he bid for the same timber and the same gangs to get it out, and for the same bottoms to take the lumber to Chicago. It cost Lucas Cullen; and it cost Henry Laylor; but neither would let the other drive him away; so they fought till the dry summer of the great fires, and Henry Laylor was burned out; and, as you have just heard, he was killed. Perhaps he injured himself and was surrounded by fire; perhaps he stayed too long and smoke overcame
