supposing it true that a mesmerised patient can respond to the will or
passes of a mesmeriser a hundred miles distant, is the response less
occasioned by a material being; it may be through a material fluid--call
it Electric, call it Odic, call it what you will--which has the power of
traversing space and passing obstacles, that the material effect is
communicated from one to the other.

Hence all that I had hitherto witnessed, or expected to witness, in this
strange house, I believed to be occasioned through some agency or medium
as mortal as myself; and this idea necessarily prevented the awe with
which those who regard as supernatural things that are not within the
ordinary operations of nature, might have been impressed by the
adventures of that memorable night.

As, then, it was my conjecture that all that was presented, or would be
presented, to my senses, must originate in some human being gifted by
constitution with the power so to present them, and having some motive
so to do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way, was rather
philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in
as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist
could be in awaiting the effects of some rare though perhaps perilous
chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept my mind detached from
fancy, the more the temper fitted for observation would be obtained; and
I therefore riveted eye and thought on the strong daylight sense in the
page of my Macaulay.

I now became aware that something interposed between the page and the
light--the page was overshadowed; I looked up, and I saw what I shall
find it very difficult, perhaps impossible, to describe.