Francis told her, she said, that there was a test, and the test was in a box, and the box was in a big black drawer. "It's a test, he says it's a test," she repeated several times.
Then she stopped, and I could hear her whispering again.
"But it's silly, it's nonsense," she said. "It doesn't mean anything."
"He says, 'Bow, wow, wow! Puss,'" she said. "He says, 'Gott strafe the V.C.' He says it's a parrot. He says it's a grey feather of a parrot and something else besides. Something about burning, he says. He says it's a cinder. It's a cinder and a parrot's feather. That's what he says is the test."
It was not long after this that the coherent speaking ceased and whisperings began again. Presently the medium said, still in the child's voice, that the power was getting less. Then the voice stopped altogether, and soon afterwards I saw her hands twisting and wrestling together. She stretched out her arms with the air of a tired woman, and rubbed her eyes, and came out of trance.
My friend and I went home, and before we opened the box we compared and collated our notes. Then I unlocked the drawer, took out Francis's packet and broke the seals and cut the string. The cardboard box contained a piece of paper folded round one of Matilda's grey feathers and a fragment of burned coal.
Now I see no possible way of accounting for this unless we accept Mrs. Masters's explanation, and believe that in some mysterious manner Francis, his living self, was able to tell her while in this trance what were the contents of the packet he had sealed up. No possible theory of thought-transference between her and anyone living in the conditions of this earthly plane will fit the case, for the simple reason that no one living here and now has ever had the smallest knowledge of what the packet contained. That information had never, until the moment that Mrs. Masters communicated it to me and my friend, been known to more than one person. Francis had made the packet, had sealed it up, and in that locked drawer it had remained till we opened it after this sitting. I can conceive of no possible channel of communication except one, namely, that Francis himself spoke in some mysterious way to the medium's mind. My reason and my power of conjecture are utterly unable to think of any other explanation.