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“And have you spoken to your grandson, old Mr. Scott?” I said. “It is but right that you should make yourself known to him.”

“So have I thought,” he answered, “and I have felt an earnest drawing toward my daughter’s child. I have seen him thrice, but have not had the heart to speak to him and declare myself the progenitor of that mother whose memory I know he cherishes.”

“You shall make yourself known to him,” I said. “I will prepare the way.”

He shook me again by the hand and took his leave without a word. He was deeply affected.

I reseated myself by my table, one thought after another rushing through my mind. Had ever man heard a story such as this! What were all the experiences of the members of the Society for Psychical Research, their stories of apparitions, their instances of occult influences, their best authenticated incidents of supernaturalism compared to this experience of mine! Should I hasten and tell it all to my wife? I hesitated. If what I had heard should not be true–and this, my first doubt or suspicion impressed upon me how impossible to me had been doubt or suspicion during the presence of my visitor–it would be wrong to uselessly excite her mind. On the other hand, if I had heard nothing but the truth, what would happen should she sympathize as deeply with Amos Kilbright as I did, and then should that worthy man suddenly become dematerialized, perhaps before her very eyes? No, I would not tell her–at least not yet. But I must see the spiritualists. And that afternoon I went to them.

The leader and principal worker of the men who were about to give a series of spiritual manifestations in our town was Mr. Corbridge, a man of middle-age with a large head and earnest visage. When I spoke to him of Amos Kilbright he was very much annoyed.

“So he has been talking to you,” he said, “and after all the warnings I gave him! Well, he does that sort of thing at his own risk!”

“We all do things at our own risk,” I said, “and he has as much right to choose his line of conduct as anybody else.”

“No, he hasn’t,” said Mr. Corbridge, “he belongs to us, and it is for us to choose his line of conduct for him.”

“That is nonsense,” said I. “You have no more right over him than I have.”

“Now then,” said Mr. Corbridge, his eyes beginning to sparkle, “I may as well talk plainly to you. My associates and myself have considered this matter very carefully. At first we thought that if this fellow should tell his story we would simply pooh-pooh the whole of it, and let people think he was a little touched in his mind, which would be so natural a conclusion that everybody might be expected to come to it. But as we have determined to dematerialize him, his disappearance would bring suspicion upon us, and we might get into trouble if he should be considered a mere commonplace person. So we decided to speak out plainly, say what we had done, and what we were going to do, and thus put ourselves at the head of the spirit operators of the world. But we are not yet ready to do anything or to make our announcements, and if he had held his tongue we might have given him a pretty long string.”

“And do you mean,” I said, “that you and your associates positively intend to dematerialize Mr. Kilbright?”

“Certainly,” he answered.

“Then, I declare such an act would be inhuman; a horrible crime.”

“No,” said Mr. Corbridge, “it would be neither. In the first place he isn’t human. It is by accident that he is what he is. But it was our affair entirely, and it was a most wonderfully fortunate thing for us that it happened. At first it frightened us a little, but we have got used to it now, and we see the great opportunities that this entirely unparalleled case will give us. As he is, he is of no earthly good to anybody. You can’t take a man out of the last century and expect him to get on in any sort of business at the present day. He is too old-fashioned. He doesn’t know how we do things in the year eighteen eighty-seven. We put this subject to work selling tickets just to keep him occupied; but he can’t even do that. But, as a spirit who can be materialized or dematerialized whenever we please, he will be of the greatest value to us. When a spirit has been brought out as strongly as he has been it will be the easiest thing in the world to do it again. Every time you bring one out the less trouble it is to make it appear the next time you want it; and in this case the conditions are so favorable that it will be absolute business suicide in us if we allow ourselves to lose the chance of working it. So you see, sir, that we have marked out our course, and I assure you that we intend to stick to it.”