that the only sign of life around me was my own foot-prints, running back behind me, so far as my eye could reach.

"To-night there were two foot-prints, and it was natural, somehow, that once or twice as we walked we should stop instinctively, and without speaking, look back at the track we had made, then resume our walk, our eyes looking wide out on the smooth glittering surface stretching in front of us for the half-mile that still lay betwixt us and the water.

"Suddenly my mother stopped dead with a queer little cry, and at the same moment I saw that which instantly arrested my own footsteps.

"In a petrified silence that held bewilderment and something more, we stared a few yards ahead. Rapidly we were questioning, doubting, analysing something we both knew to lie outside the bounds of the possible.

"On the unbroken surface there was a firm, clear mark-marks-coming from nowhere-from out the void. They had no connection with the earth-yet they were human.

"Graven deep into the hard sand was a naked human footstep.

"I remember clutching my mother's arm to hold her still, though it was unnecessary. Neither of us had any desire to move a step onwards at that

moment.

"There lay the mysterious human foot-print, perfectly impressed upon the smooth surface. Running the eye onwards that foot-print, which had come from nowhere, pursued a straight undeviating course, so far as our vision could trace it to the edge of the water,

"My mother was the first to speak, and her utterance sounded thick and unnatural. Glancing at her I saw that her cheeks had blanched milk white.

"Boy! Are we mad? What's the meaning of it? Where has it come from? It's human! human! It's neither bird nor beast! It's human! It's got no fellow and it's a left one!'

"Again I strained my eyes upon it, and an awful, nameless panic, the mortal horror that guards the confines of the world we see not nor know as we know this world, stirred the hair on my head. I could feel it creeping on my scalp.

"The foot-mark was the imprint of a left foot and there was no sign of a right foot. The naked left foot that had come out of the void walked on and on towards the sea, so far as the eye could reach, and it walked alone.

"Were we going mad? I did not answer the question. I felt strangely shaken, and surely what we gazed upon would have startled anyone. I did not reason with myself for I was certain that I looked on the unearthly, and no argument could have destroyed that belief. Even had there been the track of a left and right foot, and I had suggested that the man had dropped from a passing aeroplane, I should still have known intellectually that the suggestion was nonsense.

“Not a human being in sight. Not a sail upon the glassy mirror of the ocean that faded on the horizon into a gauze of pearly vapour.

"We glanced fearfully around us.

There was

no mark of any description on the sands to right or left of us-only pure, virgin surface, and behind,

B

stretching back on the way that we had come, the clear engraving of our shod feet on the golden track. Before us, distant about seven feet, lay 'it '—that weird imprint of a naked human foot. There was silence for a few minutes, during which my mind worked rapidly but ineffectually. The evening was windless and serene, and only the low chanting of the still receding tide woke faint, hollow echoes amongst the distant sand dunes.

66

My mother turned to me. Through the armour of ordinary commonsense had crept the question. "Does the impossible sometimes happen?' "Let us go home. I cannot bear the atmosphere. I feel as if we were in another dimension. On another plane of being,' she whispered. "Stand where you are and wait for me. look closer,' I answered.

I must

"Then I walked deliberately forward and stood beside the first footprint. Deliberately I tried to assure myself that here was a pretty case of hallucination. Such a preposterous freak of imagination simply could not materialise into reality. I closed my eyes telling myself that when I opened them again there would be no horror such as we had imagined. There would be nothing but my own footprints.

"All in vain! I was once more staring down on the impossible. The clear imprint of a naked, human, left foot-simply beginning-coming from nowhere with no companion right foot or mark of crutch to help it on its way, as it moved westward to the red blaze of the setting sun.

"What explanation is there? None! I turned to my mother.

"Walk back slowly, and I will follow after. I must see where this ends,' I said, ' then I will join you again. I will walk fast.'

"I saw her make the sign of the cross, then she turned her face landwards without a word.

"Swiftly I walked, always alongside that unearthly footprint, so clear, so undeviating, that ran straight to the water's edge.

"In another ten minutes I had reached the confines of the empty, and deserted shore, where the tiny wavelets were leaving a waving ribbon of creamy foam.

"Then I stood still and looked long and shudderingly at the naked footprint that had walked straight into the ocean and passed for ever out of sight into the breast of the retreating tide."

No man can really believe a truth until he has grown to the extent which enables him to see it as truth for himself. The one final test of psychic phenomena lies in the psychic experiences of seers themselves.

This is why investigations into the realms of the spirit world prove unsatisfactory.

This is the cause of the apparent failure of the Society for Psychic Research. During the many years of its existence, it was founded in 1882, it has collected, and most carefully sifted, a vast mass of evidence proving super normal powers in the living, proving the return of the so-called dead. It can now be stated that the great scientists who have studied these matters are convinced believers, but this carries the general public no farther, nor can it carry the Society farther.

The abnormal occurrences in a haunted house are

studied by the most competent observers, but all they can do is to relate what they have seen or heard. They cannot lay hold of what they see. They cannot account for what they hear. Yet all this accumulation of evidence must not be allowed to stop and be forgotten. The essential need of a satisfactory philosophy of life is some understanding of what we call death, and it is only by a grim determination to keep up continuity that new facts will get rooted. Varied interpretations, and refusal to see in them sufficient grounds for belief in survival must be expected.

Knowing certain facts to be true, let us learn "to labour and to wait," and leave others to frame their own theories. In this life it is unlikely that we will gain clear theory or understanding. For our reward let us be grateful for continual evidence, and a heightened apprehension of the ineffable mystery of life in all its complexity, unity and worth.

The elusiveness of spirit life was brought prominently before me only a few months ago.

I was spending ten days in one of my London Clubs, and on the second night of my arrival I went to bed at half-past nine, intending to read for an hour or two before I slept. I arranged the pillows high behind my head, turned on my reading lamp, and sitting up I looked down the bed to the brightly Ι burning fire beyond.

In the armchair, drawn up to the cheerful blaze, in the chair I had just vacated, sat an old lady. Her eyes were turned away from me towards the fire, and she gave me the impression of complete indifference to my presence. Her period was the present. There was nothing of the good old