As his voice rose, Stein rose with it, stood facing him with a look of terror and ferocity, like a wild animal whose lair has suddenly been uncovered. Sudden light flashed on me. I sprang up; Ellen cowered with a cry, but above all sounded F.’s sharp, monotonous sentences.
“He is not dead; he has returned! He is—here!” as Stein, with an oath, pointed into the shadow where Warrick appeared, and leaped back as though the ghost of his victim confronted him.
It was no ghost. A little, red-headed, weak-eyed fellow had his arms about Ellen’s neck, holding her to his breast as if he had the strength of a lion. Warrick, the medium, and I exclaimed and swore, choking for words; but he was silent. He only held her as close as if he had indeed come back from the grave to find her, putting back her head, now and then, and looking at her with a wonderful love in his puny, insignificant face.
“Ellen! Ellen!” he said at last; “they told me you were dead,—you and the boy. This my Joe!—little Joe?” picking up the boy, handling his legs and arms and looking into his face, his own contorted and wet with tears. We men moved off down into the lower cabin, leaving them alone; but I saw Joe a long time after, still sitting there with his wife clinging to him, and the boy on his knees, and I could not help it, I went in and held out my hand. “I congratulate you, old fellow! God has been good to you!”
But he only looked up with a bewildered smile. “Yes, God has been good. This is Ellen, Captain. And my little son. My little son.”
Wylie’s story is soon told. Stein had persuaded him to give his creditors the slip and make for California, promising to join him shortly, and that they would speedily make their fortunes. Wylie was a man easily led, and consented. He was concealed under a trap-door in the cigar-shop, and escaped while Fordyce and I sought the police.
Stein had intercepted his letters to his wife until such time as he could send him word of her death. In his own plans upon her he was disappointed.
I am glad to say that Joe brought back enough yellow dust to keep the wolf from the door for many a day. He and his wife are living somewhere in Indiana. Joe, their son, was a drummer-boy in the Thirty-sixth Ohio, under Captain Saunders, and I’ll venture to say no braver heart kept time to his “Rat-tat-too” than that which beat under his own little jacket.
I consented to write down these facts, as I said, because of their bearing upon the matter of spiritualism. In this case, as in every other of which I have become cognizant, the mediums have only put into shape the thoughts of those who question them. To admit that certain persons can at will become possessed of the secret movements in the mind of another, will solve the whole mystery. In this case of Wylie, the mediums, Lusk, the woman at Cincinnati, and finally F., simply reproduced the surmises or knowledge of Warrick, Ellen, and Stein. It is not agreeable to think that an animal so gross as F. should have power to decipher our inmost thoughts. Better that, however, than to believe that those we have lost should hold out their hands to us through such a messenger.
FOOTNOTES: