“Take seats, friends, and form a circle o’ harmony,” said Saul Chaney.  “The me’jum is in fine condition:  he had two fits this arternoon.”

Gershom looked shockingly ill and weak.  He reclined in a great hickory arm-chair, with his eyes half open, his lips moving noiselessly.  All the persons present formed a circle and joined hands.

The moment the circle was completed by Saul and Seraphita, who were on either side of their son, touching his hands, an expression of pain and perplexity passed over his pale face, and he began to writhe and mutter.

“He’s seein’ visions,” said Saul.

“Yes, too many of ’em,” said Gershom, querulously.  “A boy in a boat, a man on a shelf, and a man with a spade—­all at once:  too many.  Get me a pencil.  One at a time, I tell you—­one at a time!”

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 as gold:  bottles tumble over without being touched.”

“What nonsense is that?” said Marshall.

“My brother died of yellow fever at sea last year.”

Both the young men became suddenly very thoughtful, and observed with great interest the result of Golyer’s “test.”  He sat by Gershom, holding his hand tightly, but gazing absently into the dying blaze of the wide chimney.  He seemed to have forgotten where he was:  a train of serious thought appeared to hold him completely under its control.  His brows were knit with an expression of severe almost fierce determination.  At one moment his breathing was hard and thick—­a moment after hurried and broken.