the brain and back to the right side of the heart in thirty seconds. Blood makes a complete circuit of the whole body within the space of two minutes, going at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour.

If the sub-conscious self can perform in each one of us such feats as these, my visit to Mr. Hill apparently drops back into utter insignificance, yet it has a tremendous significance after all for Mr. Hill. I will express it in one word-awareness.

If we are unaware of them what can it matter to us how great are the miracles being performed within ?

We are enmeshed in matter. It masks us, and deprives us of that full self-consciousness which is the ultimate goal of all humanity. Mr. Hill's mask has got a crack in it which he will not seek to mend. He knows enough to be aware that he has won a long step, and a signal triumph on the long, long trail by which we all must pass to ultimate reality.

CHAPTER V

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE

DOUBTLESS it is true that "all houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses"; what is so extremely interesting to the investigator is the discovery of the vast number there are in possession of well-authenticated apparitions.

Though many of the letters I receive containing accounts of hauntings are marked " private," there are others where no restrictions are imposed. It all depends upon circumstances. Some persons are in a position placing them above the fear of publicity. They own the house, have no desire to sell, and they and their domestics have become ghostproof. They have discovered that an occasional apparition does no harm to anyone. It economises space as the maids do not insist on having a room to themselves, and no one knows enough about the subject to attempt liberation for the earth-bound haunters. It is quite possible, and the good and kind thing to do, to loose them and set them free, but few know the way to do it, and fewer still, if they did know the way, would care to put it into practice.

The general feeling is to give a ghost a wide berth as something unnatural and uncanny.

Unluckily, the owners of genuine haunted houses are very often obliged to hide the fact so far as they

are able. They fear that in the event of their being compelled to sell, the evil reputation will depreciate the value of their property. Often the most absurd and far-fetched explanations have to be brought forward to account for the disturbance or the visitation, and I have known cases where men and women hung on to the house month after month, though in hourly terror, simply because they had invested in it their little all, and evacuation would mean financial ruin. As there are many such cases at the present moment in full operation, let me offer a piece of advice to those who are thus afflicted.

Boldly advertise your house as a genuine haunted abode. Such an advertisement will prove far more attractive than the sweet inducements offered up in the house-agents' batch of slips or catalogue. "Genuine haunted house to be let or sold " would instantly arrest the eye of the thousands who scan the pages of Country Life. I warn you, the rush for your house will be torrential. I also warn you that you must be prepared to deliver the goods to the successful competitor. By which, I mean, that you must have sufficient evidence to lay before the eager bidder to convince him that the hauntings are genuine and not illusory.

Though you cannot hope to " turn on " the ghost for his special edification, you can begin to collect signed testimony at once, and you will find that very shortly you will be possessed of quite sufficient material to enable you to carry through a firstclass deal.

There is no trouble now in disposing of such a genuine article. Investigators swarm, and many are very rich. The trouble is that the supply of

such houses is not equal to the demand. Owners who wish to be rid of haunted property behave very foolishly in attempting to disguise the truth. Rumours get abroad, and those who are nervous of hauntings will not come near the place. Investigators, who would be likely purchasers, are deterred by the owner's angry or sarcastic denials. Thus he falls between two stools and his property hangs on his hands.

Fear of ridicule is dying out fast. We have advanced beyond the stage of laughing at what we do not understand. Nowadays such a vast number of people have "seen things" that the instant recollection of some personal experience, utterly inexplicable to normal intelligence, or the remembrance of that curious story "Brown vouches for on oath" forbids ridicule when the subject is broached.

Every day the Press brings the supernatural under public notice, and there is one point which now makes the subject trebly interesting the great diversity of psychic experiences to-day. Their variety is infinite.

The grey lady and the headless man have apparently got tired of their age-long perambulations. They have withdrawn, or been withdrawn, into the lands to which they rightly belong. They have been succeeded by apparitions of a more fearful type which cannot be classified under any of the well-known categories of the psychic researcher.

The story which I am about to append is a good example of an unclassified apparition, and was published by The Weekly Dispatch, (to whom I am indebted for kind permission to reproduce)

December 24th, 1922, above the signature of Lord St. Audries:

One Sunday in September, 1920, a young Oxford friend of mine came to tea, bringing with him his brother, a clergyman, and a friend, Lord St. Audries.

During tea the latter stated that he would very much like to visit a certain haunted house in the neighbourhood as it was empty at that time, and the two men, who were with him, at once volunteered to conduct him to it.

What befell them is of a very extraordinary character, and they were good enough later on to write out for me and sign an account of their terrifying experiences. If all men possessed the moral courage of Lord St. Audries, psychic research would be considerably more advanced than it is at present. Luckily it does sometimes happen that when at length a man actually knows he becomes indifferent to the possibility of ridicule. He is too sorry for the scoffer to care what the scoffer thinks of him.

MY MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE WITH A "GHOST" Mystery Room of Deserted Devonshire Mansion.

By Lord St. Audries.

Do you believe in ghosts? Or are you one of those fortunate persons who have no fear of the unseen? Or, again, do you belong to the great majority who keep an open mind, but who like to feel on Christmas Eve that, after all, just round the corner, in the mysterious darkness, something might happen?

I believe in ghosts, and not only on Christmas