The Canuck felt perhaps the simpler joy that the average man has in any strange notion that he is able to grasp.  He stopped in his walk and said:  “Yes, and if you was dead and went to heaven, and stayed so long you smelt, like Lazarus, and you come back and tol’ ’em what you saw, nobody goin’ believe you.”

“Well, I guess you’re right there, Jombateeste,” said Whitwell, with pleasure in the Canuck’s point.  After a moment he suggested to Westover:  “Then I s’pose, if you feel the way you do, you don’t care much about plantchette?”

“Oh yes, I do,” said the painter.  “We never know when we may be upon the point of revelation.  I wouldn’t miss any chance.”

Whether Whitwell felt an ironic slant in the words or not, he paused a moment before he said:  “Want to start her up, Jackson?”

Jackson brought to the floor the forefeet of his chair, which he had tilted from it in leaning back, and without other answer put his hand on the planchette.  It began to fly over the large sheet of paper spread upon the table, in curves and angles and eccentrics.

“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.