pened, and the morning brought the same discovery. The old captain then decided to consult his priest.

That night Father C. told me that he himself kept watch outside the door of the curio room.

At first there was complete silence. Then the noise began.

Father C. had unlocked the door some time previously, and had provided himself with an electric torch. For a few moments he listened intently to some one in the completely dark room moving about, and placing the articles from off the shelves upon the floor.

Then suddenly he threw open the door, and flashed his light full upon the interior.

No human being was within, complete silence fell, but the work had been begun. Before beginning his watch, Father C. had made sure that all the articles were on their shelves. There was nothing on the floor. Now about half the curios had been removed from the shelves, and were neatly placed on the floor.

Standing there alone in the little lighted room, Father C. prayed for the repose of this troubled soul, who chose such a curious and futile method of manifesting its continued existence in the unseen. He had no doubt as to who that soul was. It belonged to the old sea captain's newly buried wife, and he there and then assured her that masses would be said for the repose of her soul, and that she might be at peace.

From that hour all disturbances ceased in the house.

Here again, in this absolutely true story related

to me by one of the most saintly men on earth, we come up against the old unanswered questions. How can a disembodied spirit make a noise? How can it remove material objects from one spot to another? Well, we don't know, and that is the only answer to those questions.

Such phenomena occur. That is at present the extent of our knowledge.

CHAPTER XI

THE SILENCES

THE poet Browning was right in his doctrine of the great, eternal moments. Hours of destiny are also hours of discovery when the whole life seems packed into a single second of revelation.

The silent forces are the most powerful in the universe, and sometimes at the end of long, wistful vigils the unseen drops the veil.

The old Hebrew prophets and seers realised this to the full. They understood the supreme law of cause and effect, the relation of outward happenings to inward thought. National successes or disasters they attributed to the dominating desires of the people. They knew that wars, pestilence, famine, were the result of wrongly directed thought forces of the multitude. These psychic forces which culminate in destruction or resurrection.

I shall always look back upon those ten to twenty minutes betwixt the warning " take cover and the first muffled roar of London's defence against invading air craft as the greatest psychological moments of my life.

I had lived to an age when the hope of receiving any fresh impressions was exceedingly faint. I have survived to see and hear something which has never been seen or heard before, something that will never recur in that particular form again.

I went to London for the purpose of witnessing three air raids. I realised the pure uniqueness of the spectacle, yet there were countless individuals who, feeling neither fear or curiosity, went quietly to bed. They had no interest in watching what was undeniably the most sensational and dramatic display London ever witnessed or will ever witness again.

The first raid I saw was a Zeppelin Zeppelin raid. I beheld what looked like a gold cigar motionless against the velvety blackness of the night sky. Amid an appalling din the people, unaware of their danger, thronged the streets. The coming of the Gothas changed all that.

I had never known before how profoundly impressive a great city can be. Never before had London fallen into a breathless, palpitating stillness. We have lived through several mighty silences. The listening silence before a raid. The speaking silence when every soul obeyed the word of command,

"Halt! whilst the dead go by."

Such was the last silence on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of All Hallows and the Holy Souls.

The hush before an air raid, whilst the great city crouched, waiting for the sounds of the Gothas' approach, was to me a marvellous experience.

went out and stood on a balcony overlooking the street, and waited.

The night was full of shadows and splendours. The remote turmoil of the city languished in futile stirring, and the sky's black pageantry of gloom was studded by a myriad stars.

The house I inhabited, like all others, was plunged in darkness, and I had to feel my way through the room to reach the window. When I passed out and dropped the curtain behind me I was able to see, hear, feel London falling into that profound, waiting silence that had such a quality of awe and mysticism.

It was as though all that had been clear and true had receded into the remote hint of a vast invisibility of inexorable darkness, causing the brain to reel with the instability of things.

At first there were sporadic, isolated sounds. A taxi tearing for cover. A private car rushing for home. A woman's shrill hysterical laugh. A solitary man or woman running swiftly, lightly with bent shrouded head.

If anyone spoke it was in a whisper. No human intonation betwixt a shriek or a whisper passed the lips. A maid or man-servant would creep softly up from a basement, whisper together, then stealthily disappear again. Within five minutes of the warning the street was swept clear of life.

The atmosphere became sinister. The pall of the preternatural, the ghastliness of the inexplicable mingled with some protean darkness and strangeness within.

On either side rose the black bulk of the houses, draped in silence, utterly lifeless. Every vestige of vitality, every sign of sentience seemed exterminated.

Though many of the windows were open to the warm night, no glimmer, no sound came from them. Within that darkness, in a vice of silence, crouched thousands of human beings, listening,