What affected Westover first of all at the seance, and perhaps most of all, was the quality of the air in the little house; it was close and stuffy, mixed with an odor of mould and an ancient smell of rats.  The kerosene-lamp set in the centre of the table, where Jackson afterward placed his planchette, devoured the little life that was left in it.  At the gasps which Westover gave, with some despairing glances at the closed windows, Whitwell said:  “Hot?  Well, I guess it is a little.  But, you see, Jackson has got to be careful about the night air; but I guess I can fix it for you.”  He went out into the ell, and Westover heard him raising a window.  He came back and asked, “That do?  It ’ll get around in here directly,” and Westover had to profess relief.

Jackson came in presently with the little Canuck, whom Whitwell presented to Westover:  “Know Jombateeste?”

The two were talking about a landslide which had taken place on the other side of the mountain; the news had just come that they had found among the ruins the body of the farm-hand who had been missing since the morning of the slide; his funeral was to be the next day.

Jackson put his planchette on the table, and sat down before it with a sigh; the Canuck remained standing, and on foot he was scarcely a head higher than the seated Yankees.  “Well,” Jackson said, “I suppose he knows all about it now,” meaning the dead farm-hand.

“Yes,” Westover suggested, “if he knows anything.”

“Know anything!” Whitwell shouted.  “Why, man, don’t you believe he’s as much alive as ever he was?”

“I hope so,” said Westover, submissively.

“Don’t you know it?”

“Not as I know other things.  In fact, I don’t know it,” said Westover, and he was painfully aware of having shocked his hearers by the agnosticism so common among men in towns that he had confessed it quite simply and unconsciously.  He perceived that faith in the soul and life everlasting was as quick as ever in the hills, whatever grotesque or unwonted form it wore.  Jackson sat with closed eyes and his head fallen back; Whitwell stared at the painter, with open mouth; the little Canuck began to walk up and down impatiently; Westover felt a reproach, almost an abhorrence, in all of them.

Whitwell asked:  “Why, don’t you think there’s any proof of it?”

“Proof?  Oh Yes.  There’s testimony enough to carry conviction to the stubbornest mind on any other point.  But it’s very strange about all that.  It doesn’t convince anybody but the witnesses.  If a man tells me he’s seen a disembodied spirit, I can’t believe him.  I must see the disembodied spirit myself.”

“That’s something so,” said Whitwell, with a relenting laugh.

“If one came back from the dead, to tell us of a life beyond the grave, we should want the assurance that he’d really been dead, and not merely dreaming.”

Whitwell laughed again, in the delight the philosophic mind finds even in the reasoning that hates it.