He is not at all the sort of man to be vaguely afraid. He does not like vagueness, and, determined now to find out what caused this curious night disturbance, he lay awake, waiting, and when the footsteps started coming the third time, he arose at once. Just as they got opposite his door and he was in the act of gripping the knob, the knob turned in his hand. He swung the door open. There was no one there.

Now his brother—who had been delayed a day—arrived on the morrow and they arranged, for old time’s sake, to occupy the same bed. When they had retired, my friend soon affected to feel sleepy, for he had not mentioned his nocturnal adventure with the footsteps to anyone and wanted to make sure, if possible, that he had not been the victim of some odd form of hallucination. For normally he does not possess the ‘gift’. So presently he said good-night and composed his breathing for slumber.

In due time he heard the footsteps and felt the dig of his brother’s elbow. ‘What is it?’ he asked sleepily.

‘Footsteps—up the stairs—listen!’ whispered his brother, all nervous tension.

Together they did all they could that night to find any possible explanation of these footsteps, but were completely baffled, and the following day they shifted their lodging.

Some time thereafter my friend was back in the same neighbourhood on a visit, and actually attended the funeral of the ‘wandering’ old lady who had slept below him. Her body had been found on the ground beneath his bedroom window, from which it had fallen with fatal results.

He invoked Dunne’s Experiment with Time and we traversed theory and practice generally, but of his actual experiences in that cottage there could be no shadow of a doubt.

That is a fairly common type of story. In fact it is by far the most common. The Brahan Seer and the Petty Seer saw remarkable things—and always before they happened. A very rare type is that which, while dealing with the present, invokes both past and future. Here is about the most interesting example of this type that I have encountered recently. It was told me by a medical doctor, and I may not, for obvious reasons, be more specific here than to give as locality the Western Highlands. The subject in this case was a young woman, cheerful and companionable, anything but hypochondriac, though confined to bed with what is normally a fatal disease. The doctor got his first shock when he went to a certain house where a woman was about to be confined. On the way, he was wondering how he would be able to get her to agree to go to a distant medical institution, for he knew it was just the one thing that any local woman would hate to do. Yet because of certain facts in the history of her case, he must get her to agree to go. Prepared for the most obstinate opposition, he was amazed to find none. Husband and wife agreed at once. But later he discovered that the bed-ridden young woman of the ‘gift’ had foretold his coming and his instructions and had advised the husband to go home and prevail with his wife to obey the doctor.