"Why not," snorted Bickley, "seeing that he deceives himself
from one year's end to the other?"

"I think," said Bastin, "that this is an unholy business and
that we are both deceived by the devil. I will have no more to do
with it," and he departed to his cabin, probably to say some
appropriate prayers.

After this the seances were given up but Jacobsen produced an
instrument called a planchette and with difficulty persuaded
Bickley to try it, which he did after many precautions. The
thing, a heart-shaped piece of wood mounted on wheels and with a
pencil stuck at its narrow end, cantered about the sheet of paper
on which it was placed, Bickley, whose hands rested upon it,
staring at the roof of the cabin. Then it began to scribble and
after a while stopped still.

"Will the Doctor look?" said Jacobsen. "Perhaps the spirits
have told him something."

"Oh! curse all this silly talk about spirits," exclaimed
Bickley, as he arranged his eyeglasses and held up the paper to
the light, for it was after dinner.

He stared, then with an exclamation which I will not repeat,
and a glance of savage suspicion at the poor Dane and the rest of
us, threw it down and left the cabin. I picked it up and next
moment was screaming with laughter. There on the top of the sheet
was a rough but entirely recognizable portrait of Bickley with