The circle broke up, and a table was brought, with writing materials.
Gershom grasped a pencil, and said, with imperious and feverish
impatience, "Come on, now, and don't waste the time of the shining ones."

An old woman took his right hand. He wrote with his left very rapidly an
instant, and threw her the paper, always with his eyes shut close.

Old Mrs. Scritcher read with difficulty, "A boy in a boat--over he goes;"
and burst out in a piteous wail, "Oh, my poor little Ephraim! I always
knowed it."

"Silence, woman!" said the relentless medium.

"Mr. Marshall," said Saul, "would you like a test?"

"No, thank you," said the young gentleman. "I brought my friend, Mr.
Baldassano, who, as a traveler, is interested in these things."

"Will you take the medium's hand, Mr. What's-your-name?"

The young foreigner took the lean and feverish hand of Gershom, and again
the pencil flew rapidly over the paper. He pushed the manuscript from him
and snatched his hand away from Baldassano. As the latter looked at what
was written, his tawny cheek grew deadly pale. "Dios mio!" he exclaimed to
Marshall. "This is written in Castilian!"

The two young men retired to the other end of the room and read by the
tallow candle the notes scrawled on the paper. Baldassano translated: "A
man on a shelf--table covered with bottles beside him: man's face yellow