It was in this mood that she entered the little apartment where Bott
held what he called his "Intermundane Seances." The room was small and
stuffy. A simulacrum of a chest of drawers in one corner was really
Bott's bed, where the seer reposed at night, and which, tilted up
against the wall during the day, contained the rank bedclothes, long
innocent of the wash-tub. There were a dozen or so of cane-bottom
chairs, a little table for a lamp, but no other furniture. At one side
of the room was a small closet without a door, but with a dark and
dirty curtain hung before its aperture. Around it was a wooden railing,
breast high.

A boy with a high forehead, and hair combed behind ears large and
flaring like those of a rabbit, sat by the door, and took the tickets
of invited guests and the half-dollars of the casuals. The seer
received everybody with a nerveless shake of a clammy hand, showed them
to seats, and exchanged a word or two about the weather, and the
"conditions," favorable or otherwise, to spiritual activity. When he
saw Maud and Sam his tallowy face flushed, in spots, with delight. He
took them to the best places the room afforded, and stammered his
pleasure that they had come.

"Oh! the pleasure is all ours," said Maud, who was always
self-possessed when she saw men stammering. "It's a great privilege to
get so near to the truth as you bring us, Mr. Bott."

The prophet had no answer ready; he merely flushed again in spots, and
some new arrivals called him away.

The room was now pretty well filled with the unmistakable crowd which
always attend such meetings. They were mostly artisans, of more