Sylvia recoiled from the mad old creature.  She could not bear to have her sane, calm, strong mother’s name on those lips.  Cousin Parnelia went on, full of confidence:  “I was sound asleep last night when I was awakened by the clock’s striking two.  It sounded so loud that I thought somebody had called to me.  I sat up in bed and said, ’What is it?’ and then I felt a great longing to have planchette write.  I got out of bed in my nightgown and sat down in the dark at the table.  Planchette wrote so fast that I could hardly keep up with it.  And when it stopped, I lighted a match and see ... here ... in your mother’s very handwriting”—­fervently she held the bit of paper up for Sylvia to see.  The girl cast a hostile look at the paper and saw that the writing on it was the usual scrawl produced by Cousin Parnelia, hardly legible, and resembling anything rather than her mother’s handwriting.

“Read it—­read it—­it is too beautiful!” quivered the other, “and then let me show it to your father.  It was meant for him—­”

Sylvia shook like a roughly plucked fiddle-string.  She seized the wrinkled old hand fiercely.  “Cousin Parnelia, I forbid you going anywhere near my father!  You know as well as I do how intensely he has always detested spiritualism.  To see you might be the thing that would—­”

The old woman broke in, protesting, her hat falling to one side, her brown false front sliding with it and showing the thin, gray hairs beneath.  “But, Sylvia, this is the very thing that would save him—­such a beautiful, beautiful message from your mother,—­see!  In her own handwriting!”

Sylvia snatched the sheet of yellow paper. “That’s not my mother’s handwriting!  Do you think I am as crazy as you are!” She tore the paper into shreds and scattered them from her, feeling a relief in the violence of her action.  The next moment she remembered how patient her mother had always been with her daft kinswoman and seeing tears in the blurred old eyes, went to put placating arms about the other’s neck.  “Never mind, Cousin Parnelia,” she said with a vague kindness, “I know you mean to do what’s right—­only we don’t believe as you do, and Father must not be excited!” She turned sick as she spoke and shrank away from the hedge, carrying her small old cousin with her.  Above the hedge appeared her father’s gray face and burning eyes.

He was not looking at her, but at Cousin Parnelia, who now sprang forward, crying that she had had a beautiful, beautiful message from Cousin Barbara. “It came last night at two o’clock ... just after the clock struck two—­”

Professor Marshall looked quickly at his daughter, and she saw that he too had heard the clock striking in the dreadful night, and that he noted the coincidence.

“Just after the clock struck two she wrote the loveliest message for you with planchette.  Sylvia tore it up.  But I’m sure that if we try with faith, she will repeat it ...”