Tyranny of the Dark

Britt looked at Kate. "The painter might have stood on his head," he blasphemously whispered.

And so down through that splendid room the host moved, exhibiting letters from Napoleon, flowers from Marie Antoinette, verses from Mary Queen of Scots, together with paternal advice from many others equally eminent in history.

"You keep good company," ventured Kate. "Have you anything from Shakespeare?"

"Certainly; and from Edwin Forrest and Lincoln and Grant."

"Anything from Admiral Kidd?" asked Britt.

"Or from Mary Jane Holmes?" added Kate.

Simeon looked at the jokers in silence, not quite sure whether they intended to trap him or not. "No, I save only the words of the most eminent persons in history, outside my own family--I have wonderful testimony from them."

"Ah, show us those, please," cried Kate.

He hesitated, pondering Britt's face, and at last said, "I will show you some materializations," and led the way to some cases filled with pressed flowers. "These are from India and Tibet," he explained.

Kate was getting bored, but Britt seemed fascinated by both Pratt and the exhibit. "To think of one human being possessing a collection like that--painfully amassing it. It's too beautiful!"

"But the girl--ask him to let us see the girl," she urged.

"Don't hurry; he can't be turned aside from his groove."

The treasures of the drawers hinted at, Simeon proceeded to exhibit other wonders. He possessed a coin brought from the sacred city of Lhasa and dropped through the ceiling into a closed and sealed box. "There is no other known to the Western Hemisphere," he said. "The British Museum offered me a thousand pounds for it."

To his mind all these slates, pictures, and flowers were evidences of the interest the great shades had taken in the work of converting Simeon Pratt to the faith, and the messages were intended to steady him in his convictions and to furnish him material with which to bring the world to his view. The man's faith was like to madness--without one ray of humor.

At any other time this astounding museum would have been a most absorbing study to Kate, but she was tingling with desire to get at the young seeress and her mother. "What must they be," she asked herself, "to mix with this kind of idiocy?"

At last, when the favoring pause came, Britt explained to Pratt that Mrs. Rice was the sister of one who had known Viola in the West, and that she very much wished to see the psychic for a moment.

"I think Miss Lambert is engaged," replied Simeon, sulkily; "but I'll see," and he led the way to a small sitting-room on the same floor. "Stay here and I'll send your card up."