"Too late," Lute answered lightly. "No more stock quotations for you.

Planchette is adjourned, and we're just winding up the discussion of the
theory of it. Do you know how late it is?"

*******
"Well, what did you do last night after we left?"

"Oh, took a stroll," Chris answered.
Lute's eyes were quizzical as she asked with a tentativeness that was palpably

assumed, "With--a--with Mr. Barton?"
"Why, yes."

"And a smoke?"
"Yes; and now what's it all about?"

Lute broke into merry laughter. "Just as I told you that you would do. Am I
not a prophet? But I knew before I saw you that my forecast had come true. I

have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew he had walked with you last night, for
he is vowing by all his fetishes and idols that you are a perfectly splendid

young man. I could see it with my eyes shut. The Chris Dunbar glamour has
fallen upon him. But I have not finished the catechism by any means. Where

have you been all morning?"
"Where I am going to take you this afternoon."

"You plan well without knowing my wishes."
"I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see a horse I have found."

Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, "Oh, good!"
"He is a beauty," Chris said.

But her face had suddenly gone grave, and apprehension brooded in her eyes.
"He's called Comanche," Chris went on. "A beauty, a regular beauty, the

perfect type of the Californian cow-pony. And his lines--why, what's the
matter?"

Don't let us ride any more," Lute said, "at least for a while. Really, I think
I am a tiny bit tired of it, too."

He was looking at her in astonishment, and she was bravely meeting his eyes.
"I see hearses and flowers for you," he began, "and a funeraloration; I see

the end of the world, and the stars falling out of the sky, and the heavens
rolling up as a scroll; I see the living and the dead gathered together for

the final judgement, the sheep and the goats, the lambs and the rams and all
the rest of it, the white-robed saints, the sound of golden harps, and the

lost souls howling as they fall into the Pit--all this I see on the day that
you, Lute Story, no longer care to ride a horse. A horse, Lute! a horse!"

"For a while, at least," she pleaded.
"Ridiculous!" he cried. "What's the matter? Aren't you well?--you who are

always so abominably and adorably well!"
"No, it's not that," she answered. "I know it is ridiculous, Chris, I know it,

but the doubt will arise. I cannot help it. You always say I am so sanely
rooted to the earth and reality and all that, but--perhaps it's superstition,

I don't know--but the whole occurrence, the messages of Planchette, the
possibility of my father's hand, I know not how, reaching, out to Ban's rein

and hurling him and you to death, the correspondence between my father's
statement that he has twice attempted your life and the fact that in the last

two days your life has twice been endangered by horses--my father was a great
horseman--all this, I say, causes the doubt to arise in my mind. What if there

be something in it? I am not so sure. Science may be too dogmatic in its
denial of the unseen. The forces of the unseen, of the spirit, may well be too

subtle, too sublimated, for science to lay hold of, and recognize, and
formulate. Don't you see, Chris, that there is rationality in the very doubt?

It may be a very small doubt--oh, so small; but I love you too much to run
even that slight risk. Besides, I am a woman, and that should in itself fully

account for my predisposition toward superstition.
"Yes, yes, I know, call it unreality. But I've heard you paradoxing upon the

reality of the unreal--the reality of delusion to the mind that is sick. And
so with me, if you will; it is delusion and unreal, but to me, constituted as

I am, it is very real--is real as a nightmare is real, in the throes of it,
before one awakes."

"The most logicalargument for illogic I have ever heard," Chris smiled. "It
is a good gaming proposition, at any rate. You manage to embrace more chances

in your philosophy than do I in mine. It reminds me of Sam--the gardener you
had a couple of years ago. I overheard him and Martin arguing in the stable.

You know what a bigoted atheist Martin is. Well, Martin had deluged Sam with
floods of logic. Sam pondered awhile, and then he said, 'Foh a fack, Mis'

Martin, you jis' tawk like a house afire; but you ain't got de show I has.'
'How's that?' Martin asked. 'Well, you see, Mis' Martin, you has one chance to

mah two.' 'I don't see it,' Martin said. 'Mis' Martin, it's dis way. You has
jis' de chance, lak you say, to become worms foh de fruitification of de

cabbage garden. But I's got de chance to lif' mah voice to de glory of de Lawd
as I go paddin' dem golden streets--along 'ith de chance to be jis' worms

along 'ith you, Mis' Martin.'"
"You refuse to take me seriously," Lute said, when she had laughed her

appreciation.
"How can I take that Planchette rigmarole seriously?" he asked.

"You don't explain it--the writing" target="_blank" title="n.笔迹；书法">handwriting of my father, which Uncle Robert
recognized--oh, the whole thing, you don't explain it."

"I don't know all the mysteries of mind," Chris answered. " But I believe such
phenomena will all yield to scientificexplanation in the not distant future."

"Just the same, I have a sneaking desire to find out some more from
Planchette," Lute confessed. "The board is still down in the dining room. We

could try it now, you and I, and no one would know."
Chris caught her hand, crying: "Come on! It will be a lark."

Hand in hand they ran down the path to the tree-pillared room.
"The camp is deserted," Lute said, as she placed Planchette on the table.

"Mrs. Grantly and Aunt Mildred are lying down, and Mr. Barton has gone off
with Uncle Robert. There is nobody to disturb us." She placed her hand on the

board. "Now begin."
For a few minutes nothing happened. Chris started to speak, but she hushed him

to silence. The preliminary twitchings had appeared in her hand and arm. Then
the pencil began to write. They read the message, word by word, as it was

written:
There is wisdom greater than the wisdom of reason. Love proceeds not out of

the dry-as-dust way of the mind. Love is of the heart, and is beyond all
reason, and logic, and philosophy. Trust your own heart, my daughter. And if

your heart bids you have faith in your lover, then laugh at the mind and its
cold wisdom, and obey your heart, and have faith in your lover.--Martha.

"But that whole message is the dictate of your own heart," Chris cried. "Don't
you see, Lute? The thought is your very own, and your subconscious mind has

expressed it there on the paper."
"But there is one thing I don't see," she objected.

"And that?"
"Is the writing" target="_blank" title="n.笔迹；书法">handwriting. Look at it. It does not resemble mine at all. It is

mincing, it is old-fashioned, it is the old-fashionedfeminine of a generation
ago."

"But you don't mean to tell me that you really believe that this is a message
from the dead?" he interrupted.

"I don't know, Chris," she wavered. "I am sure I don't know."
"It is absurd!" he cried. "These are cobwebs of fancy. When one dies, he is

dead. He is dust. He goes to the worms, as Martin says. The dead? I laugh at
the dead. They do not exist. They are not. I defy the powers of the grave, the

men dead and dust and gone!
"And what have you to say to that?" he challenged, placing his hand on

Planchette.
On the instant his hand began to write. Both were startled by the suddenness

of it. The message was brief:
BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE!

He was distinctly sobered, but he laughed. "It is like a miracle play. Death
we have, speaking to us from the grave. But Good Deeds, where art thou? And

Kindred? and Joy? and Household Goods? and Friendship? and all the goodly
company?"

But Lute did not share his bravado. Her fright showed itself in her face. She
laid her trembling hand on his arm.

"Oh, Chris, let us stop. I am sorry we began it. Let us leave the quiet dead
to their rest. It is wrong. It must be wrong. I confess I am affected by it. I