and Christian woman. She
herself believes in the reality of the vision as firmly as she believes
in her own existence. The death of her son on his way back from
Australia was the cause of a sorrow too deep for the mother to weave
such a romance around it. Further, her statements are not the accretions
of after years, but were told, and told freely, at the time when her son
was known to have died. This is about twenty years ago. During these
twenty years she has not varied in her statements, and repeats them
still with all the faith and with all the circumstantial details of the
first narration.

"I consider her vision--extending as it does from the time the
homeward-bound vessel left the harbour, over many days, until the burial
of her son's body at sea--worthy of a place alongside the best of the
Ghost Stories you have given to the world."

Mr. Arthur, the son of the percipient in this strange story, wrote to me
as follows from Loch-side, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, on the 14th January,
1892:--

"My mother, Mrs. Arthur, of Benston, New Cumnock, Ayrshire, received
your valued favour of 8th inst., together with a copy of the Christmas
Number of the _Review of Reviews_. The circumstances you refer to
happened twenty-one years ago, a short account of which appeared in a
Scotch paper, and a much fuller one appeared in an Australian paper,
but, unfortunately, no copy has been preserved, even the diary in which
the particulars were written has been destroyed.

"It would not serve any good purpose for you to send a shorthand writer
to interview my mother, as she is approaching fourscore years, and her
memory is rapidly failing. I believe I can get a very full account
(barring _minutiae_) from a younger brother. But if the young man
who was a fellow-passenger with my brother (when my brother died at sea
off the Cape of Good Hope) is still alive, he is the proper party to
give a full and minute account. He was the party who informed my parents
of my brother's death. My mother lost no time in visiting him for
particulars. I think the young man's name was Gilmour. He was then in
the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. When he began to narrate what had taken
place, my mother stopped him and asked him to listen to her. She then
went on to say that on a certain date, while she was about her usual
household duties, her son came into the room where she was, said so and
so and so and so, and walked out. Mr. Gilmour said that what she had
said