d not buy it.' 'But I didn't come
yesterday.' 'Why, excuse me, you did, and took the book up and laid it
down again while I was serving Mr. M., and you went away before I could
ask you about it; Mr. M. remarked that it was strange you did not answer
him when he spoke.' When I asked the gentleman referred to, he confirmed
the story. Mrs. B. also saw me lower down the same street that morning.

"Still it never struck me that it was anything strange; I was only
rather curious to see the woman who was so like me. I saw her in an
unexpected manner. Going into my room one night, I happened to glance
down at my bed, and saw a form there. I thought it strange, yet was not
startled. I bent over it, and recognised my own features distinctly. I
was in perfect health at the time, and no disaster followed."

_Queen Elizabeth's Double._

In a volume published by Macmillan & Co., entitled "Legendary Fictions
of the Irish Celt," I find the following references to the Double:--

"If this phantom be seen in the morning it betokens good fortune and
long life to its prototype; if in the evening a near death awaits him.
This superstition was known and felt in England even in the reign of
Elizabeth. We quote a passage from Miss Strickland's account of her last
illness:--

"'As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the superstitious fears of
her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a
spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet alive. Lady
Guildford, who was then in waiting on the Queen, leaving her in an
almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little
air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off.
Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the
Royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to
excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. She returned
terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen still in the same
lethargic slumber in which she left her.'"

PART III.

CLAIRVOYANCE--THE VISION OF THE OUT OF SIGHT.

"Moreover, the spirit lifted me up and brought me unto the East gate,
and, behold, at the door of the gate five-and-twenty men, among whom I
saw," etc.--Ezekiel xi. 1.

Chapter I.

The Astral Camera.

When I was staying at Orchard Lea, in Windsor Forest, I did most of my
writing in a spacious window on the first floor looking out over the
garden. It opened French fash