The head, moving machine-like, turned right to
the advertisement where the Blaudett's Cadiedral
pastille reeked abominably. He grunted, and went

on: —

Incense in a censer —

Before her darling picttire framed in gold-—

Maiden's picttire — ^angel's portrait—

''Hshl'' said Mr. Cashell guardedly from the inner
office, as though in the presence of spirits. **11iere's
fioinethin^ coming through fron^ someyrh^re; b\it it



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212 TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES

isn't Poole/' I heard the crackle of sparks as he
depressed the keys of the transmitter. In my own
brain, too, something crackled, or it might have been
the hair on my head. Then I heard my own voice, in
a harsh whisper: "Mr. Cashell, there is something
coming through here, too. Leave me alone till I tell
you."

"But I thought you'd come to see thb wonderful
thing — Sir," indignantly at the end.
"Leave me alone till I tell you. Be quiet."
I watched — ^I waited. Under the blue-veined hand
—the dry hand of the consumptive — came away clear,
without erasure:

And my weak spirit fails
To think how the dead mtist freeze —

he shivered as he wrote —

Beneath the churchyard mould.
Then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back.
For an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop
spun before me in a rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through
which my own soul most dispassionately considered my
own soul as that fought with an over-mastering fear.
Then I smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from Mr.
