Accoding to Brahminical teaching there are seven main classes of spirits; some having innumerable sub-divisions. [The seventh main class consists of the:] Kaksasas, viz. souls of wizards, witches, and of clever people with evil tendencies, scientists with cruel or harsh tendencies-such as vivisectionists and sophists. All these come under my division of "earthbound phantasms of the dead"-spritis tied to this earth by passions or vices; and I should add to the list-militant suffragettes, strike agitators, hooligans, apaches, pseudo-humanitarians, religious bigots, misers, all people obsessed with manias, idiots, epileptic imbeciles and criminal lunatics. All such may at times be encountered on the lowest spiritual plane.

[Upon finding a ready market for spells for "putting old people out of the way":] "My word!" he remarked. "Isn't this a revelation? Who would have thought how many people have murder in their hearts? At least half Society would, I believe, become homicides if only there were no chance of being found out and punished. Anyhow, if we go on at this rate there will be no old people left." And it did indeed seem as if such woud be the case. For the moment the idea got abroad that old people could be thrust out of existence with absolute safety and ease, there was a perfect mania amongst men, women, and even children, to get rid of them, and the deaths of people over sixty recorded in the papers multiplied every day.

"True," Kelson replied, "and why is it? It is because civilization has killed charity. Giving in its true sense-if it exists at all-is rarely to be met with-giving in exchange-that is, in order to gain-flourishes everywhere. People will subscribe for the erection of monuments to kings and statesmen, or to well-known and, often, richly-endowed charitable institutes, in exchange for the pleasure of seeing in the newspaper, a list of the subscribers' names, and themselves included amongst those whom they consider a peg above them socially; or in exchange for votes, or notoriety, they will give liberally to the brutal strikers, or outings for the poor. "I suppose, by the poor, you mean the pampered, ill-mannered and detestably conceited County Council children." Lillian Rosenberg chimed in. "I wouldn't give a farthing to such miscalled charity, no-not if I were rolling in riches.

Any pretty face, accentuated by all the allurements of a large mushroom hat and hobble skirt, was enough for Kelson; but when that face belonged to the one girl for whom, above all other girls, he had a colossal weakness, he simply could not feast his eyes enough on it.