“Ah! yes, yes, he has come from the outer darkness,” said Luke in a sympathetic voice. “He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand. They come over here with a fixed idea, and when they find the real thing is quite different from anything they have been taught by the Churches, they are helpless. Some adapt themselves and they go on. Others don’t, and they just wander on unchanging, like this man. He was a cleric, and a very narrow, bigoted one. This is the growth of his own mental seed sown upon earth—sown in ignorance and reaped in misery.”
“What is amiss with him?”
“He does not know he is dead. He walks in the mist. It is all an evil dream to him. He has been years so. To him it seems an eternity.”
“Why do you not tell him—instruct him?”
“We cannot. We——”
The trumpet crashed.
“Music, Smiley, music! Now the vibrations should be better.”
“The higher spirits cannot reach earth-bound folk,” said Mailey. “They are in very different zones of vibration. It is we who are near them and can help them.”
“Yes, you! you!” cried the voice of Luke.
“Mr. Mailey, speak to him. You know how!” The low mutter had broken out again in the same weary monotone.