"You agree that this pile upon which you placed the last card is now odd? Now watch closely as I use my magic powers to switch the piles." She waved her hands gently and totally without effect about a foot over the two piles of cards.

"Now which pile is odd? Don't let me stampede you into anything."

Alicia frowned at her mistrustfully, then after a moment tapped the pile upon which she had placed the last card.

"Are you sure? Count them."

She counted them twice, and of course found eight cards in her "odd" pile and seven in her "even."

"How did you do that?" Alicia wailed, as I choked back a chuckle. "Ah, it's all in the mind, you know," said Miss Smith sunnily. Suddenly she frowned, looked down, and pressed her hands to her eyes.

"What is the matter?" I asked, instantly attentive.

"Nothing," she said, her frown belying her words. "Except... I just remembered where I learned that trick."

"Tell me about it," I said with studied casualness.

"I remember a man," she began in a low voice. "He was a big, red-faced, stringy-necked fellow with a great thick curling mustache. He's dressed in dungarees, long underwear, and a blue flannel vest. He chews tobacco, has bad teeth, needs a bath-you wouldn't want him in your Sunday school. He plays cards like a magician, knows a hundred ways to cheat. He has a crude, physical sense of humor. In a lot of ways he's not a very nice person, but he's not a coward and he stands by his friends. He was a friend to me."

"Can you remember his name?" "Crazy.. .Callaghan." "When did you know him?"

"I don't know. I just have this image of him in my mind, sitting at a cheap pine table with his feet up, laughing, saying, 'It's all in the mind, boy, all in the mind.' Where, when...I cannot say. He's American; it must have been in America."

I pressed her to go on, but apparently the bright and startling vision of her somewhat barbaric acquaintance brought nothing else in its train. I offered to start a card game, but she pushed the deck away sadly. "He taught me cards. I think he is dead now," she explained her lack of enthusiasm.