‘I? No, I have too tender a heart. I am just here on an errand. Calcraft the hangman hanged her.’

‘And you watched him?’

‘I and thousands of others. It’s a big crowd here … but I have a very good view.’

‘Why do you want to watch?’

‘She is a handsome woman. She makes a fine figure.’

‘But isn’t she covered?’

‘They put a white cap over her face but it has become transparent in the rain. I can see her features quite clearly – even the parting of her lips.’

‘What else is she wearing?’

‘Only a black silk gown. It rustled when she was led past me, and you could hear it rustling when she first twisted half around and back again. But it is quiet now. The rain has made it cling to her body.’

‘Is that why you are watching?’

‘I can see all her shape.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I am sixteen.’

‘Have you been to many hangings?’

‘No. There hasn’t been one for years.’

‘What year is this, then?’

‘1856.’

‘I haven’t yet asked you your name.’

‘Tom … Tommy.’

‘And your other name?’

‘Ah … Thomas.’

‘No, I meant your second name. Your family name.’

‘Aaah … (A sudden switching of voices here) AAH.’

‘What’s the matter? Why don’t you want to tell me your second name?’

‘AAAH … AAAAAH.’

‘What is it? Why are you frightened?’

‘AAAAAH … AAAAAAAAAH.’

‘It’s all right Tommy. I just wanted to know how to address you if I needed to write to you. Tommy who? Thomas what?’

‘AAAAAAH … AAAAAAAAAAAAH.’

At this point Harry Vilbert hurriedly brought his subject, who was shaking violently, back to the present. He later explained to our reporter that he did not believe he could safely proceed any further with the regression as the reluctance to disclose the second name was not Tommy’s but Barney’s. The hostility felt by the present to the previous incumbent of Barney Fugleman’s host body must have been very great, he went on, for there to have been an intervention, across time and consciousness, on this scale. It is not unusual, he said, for subjects to be dismayed and even disgusted by the unfamiliar personalities who have inexplicably usurped their accustomed functions; but he had never before witnessed such determined resistance: Tommy was so unwelcome to Barney Fugleman that he was not even allowed the most basic individualising human right to name himself.