“Feels pootty lively to-night,” said Whitwell, with a glance at Westover.

The little Canuck, as if he had now no further concern in the matter, sat down in a corner and smoked silently.  Whitwell asked, after a moment’s impatience: 

“Can’t you git her down to business, Jackson?”

Jackson gasped:  “She’ll come down when she wants to.”

The little instrument seemed, in fact, trying to control itself.  Its movements became less wild and large; the zigzags began to shape themselves into something like characters.  Jackson’s wasted face gave no token of interest; Whitwell laid half his gaunt length across the table in the endeavor to make out some meaning in them; the Canuck, with his hands crossed on his stomach, smoked on, with the same gleam in his pipe and eye.

The planchette suddenly stood motionless.

“She done?” murmured Whitwell.

“I guess she is, for a spell, anyway,” said Jackson, wearily.

“Let’s try to make out what she says.”  Whitwell drew the sheets toward himself and Westover, who sat next him.  “You’ve got to look for the letters everywhere.  Sometimes she’ll give you fair and square writin’, and then again she’ll slat the letters down every which way, and you’ve got to hunt ’em out for yourself.  Here’s a B I’ve got.  That begins along pretty early in the alphabet.  Let’s see what we can find next.”

Westover fancied he could make out an F and a T.

Whitwell exulted in an unmistakable K and N; and he made sure of an I, and an E. The painter was not so sure of an S.  “Well, call it an S,” said Whitwell.  “And I guess I’ve got an O here, and an H. Hello!  Here’s an A as large as life.  Pootty much of a mixture.”

“Yes; I don’t see that we’re much better off than we were before,” said Westover.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Whitwell.

“Write ’em down in a row and see if we can’t pick out some sense.  I’ve had worse finds than this; no vowels at all sometimes; but here’s three.”

He wrote the letters down, while Jackson leaned back against the wall, in patient quiet.

“Well, sir,” said Whitwell, pushing the paper, where he had written the letters in a line, to Westover, “make anything out of ’em?”

Westover struggled with them a moment.  “I can make out one word-shaft.”

“Anything else?” demanded Whitwell, with a glance of triumph at Jackson.

Westover studied the remaining letters.  “Yes, I get one other word-broken.”

“Just what I done!  But I wanted you to speak first.  It’s Broken Shaft.  Jackson, she caught right onto what we was talkin’ about.  This life,” he turned to Westover, in solemn exegesis, “is a broken shaft when death comes.  It rests upon the earth, but you got to look for the top of it in the skies.  That’s the way I look at it.  What do you think, Jackson?  Jombateeste?”

“I think anybody can’t see that.  Better go and get some heye-glass.”