“How?  I don’t understand.”

“Why, as a rule, I find no difficulty at all in getting some sort of response by automatic handwriting.  Are you aware that I could do nothing at all that night?”

Laurie considered it.

“Well,” he said at last, “this may sound very foolish to you; but granting that I have got unusual gifts that way—­they are your own words, Mr. Vincent—­if that is so, I don’t see why my own concentration of thought, or hypnotic sleep or trance or whatever it was—­might not have been so intense as to—­”

“I quite see,” interrupted the other.  “That is, of course, conceivable from your point of view.  It had occurred to me that you might think that....  Then I take it that your theory is that the subconscious self is sufficient to account for it all—­that in this hypnotic sleep, if you care to call it so, you simply uttered what was in your heart, and identified yourself with ... with your memory of that young girl.”

“I suppose so,” said Laurie shortly.

“And the rapping, loud, continuous, unmistakable?”

“That doesn’t seem to me important.  I did not actually hear it, you know.”

“Then what you need is some unmistakable sign?”

“Yes ... but I see perfectly that this is impossible.  Whatever I said in my sleep, either I can’t identify it as true, in which case it is worthless as evidence, or I can identify it, because I already know it, and in that case it is worthless again.”

The medium smiled, half closing his eyes.

“You must think us very childish, Mr. Baxter,” he said.

He sat up a little in his chair; then, putting his hand into his breast pocket, drew out a note-book, holding it still closed on his knee.

“May I ask you a rather painful question?” he said gently.

Laurie nodded.  He felt so secure.

“Would you kindly tell me—­first, whether you have seen the grave of this young girl since you left the country; secondly, whether anyone happens to have mentioned it to you?”

Laurie swallowed in his throat.

“Certainly no one has mentioned it to me.  And I have not seen it since I left the country.”

“How long ago was that?”

“That was ... about September the twenty-seventh.”

“Thank you...!” He opened the note-book and turned the pages a moment or two.  “And will you listen to this, Mr. Baxter?—­’Tell Laurie that the ground has sunk a little above my grave; and that cracks are showing at the sides.’”

“What is that book?” said the boy hoarsely.

The medium closed it and returned it to his pocket.

“That book, Mr. Baxter, contains a few extracts from some of the things you said during your trance.  The sentence I have read is one of them, an answer given to a demand made by me that the control should give some unmistakable proof of her identity.  She ... you hesitated some time before giving that answer.”