lived at Rochester: a very shrewd young American matron, apparently a widow, making her living by teaching music. A son, David, lived two miles away. The parents and the two younger girls had moved into the house in December 1847. We are told that the previous tenant had found it more or less haunted, but we need not notice this. It was in February 1848 that the trouble began. Mysterious raps sounded on the floors and furniture of whatever room the two little girls were in. When they lay abed, the most appalling and uncanny rapping was heard.
John D. scoffed at it all. Mrs. Fox grew more and more nervous. Least concerned of all were Margaretta and Katie. "Here, Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do," the little girl of twelve would say; and the mysterious power would promptly give the same number of raps as she had done. It did not occur to the flustered mother that there was something uncanny about this calmness of the two children, if they believed that the devil or a ghost haunted their bedroom every night. Mrs. Hardinge says that the mother's hair turned white in a week. The two merry and handsome little girls found it a joke. It was singular behaviour for the two august mortals who were chosen out of the whole race as the first vehicles of the projected invasion of earth from the spirit-world.
The way in which the mysterious something reproduced precisely what it was asked to do showed Mrs. Fox that it was an intelligent being: not a rat or an
