aly long ago. The voices
would be taken for ventriloquists, whilst scenes heard would be
considered to be perceived in catalepsy by a person in good health, and
in full possession of his faculties, if not a doctor. At Fiume is the
Whitehead torpedo manufactory, but as the hammering and other noises
connected with it would prevent the chief persons in charge of the
factory from being got at, the hypnotists were doubtless foiled there.
Of course they may have got some information indirectly, but nothing of
high value.

The alarm produced at B---- House was brought about less by the phenomena
than by the pressure on the vagus nerve or heart. Whether fatal syncope
can be produced by modifying the heart beats, as Mr. Vincent suggests it
can, is of course a question for a doctor. He seems to think such cases
not uncommon. A gentleman attacked by hypnotists twice suffered from
syncope. He was previously suffering from exhaustion brought on by rowing
a party for their lives in a squall, and took strychnine at a doctor's
orders; that medicament, as is known, makes the nerves more sensitive.
Further rascally attempts were a failure in better-situated houses. The
terror of hearing a voice suddenly is in those circumstances very great;
against one in good health it is less, no doubt. The trouble given at
B---- was particularly great in the case of Miss Moore,[23] who scarcely
slept for a week; she was Miss Freer's comrade in No. 1, the S.W. corner
room of the house at B----, and the most exposed room where voices were
chiefly heard; and that, too, by almost every one who slept there, Miss
N., the Rev. Mr. Q., Father MacL., and Madame Boisseaux. The road ran
nearest to it there. The writer believes that the remarkable fact that
No. 1, the S.W. room, No. 2, the W. room, No. 3, the N.W. room, showed a
far higher average of phenomena than the other five--_i.e._ the three
eastern and the north and south centre rooms--is accounted for by the
following circumstances.

[Footnote 23: "Alleged Haunting of B---- House," p. 118.]

No. 8, the south room, was much exposed, but unlike No. 1, it had no door
in a line with another door and a window. Upon No. 1 an almost direct
attack could be made from northward or southward; for the partition walls
of the house, as well as the outer walls, were very thick.[24]

[Footnote 24: "Alleged Haunting of B---- House," p. 94; _ibid._,
p. 140, _note_.]

In the new part of the house these were less so, b