sual custom he appeared to have nothing for me to see, but seemed
pleased to have me follow him, shewing his joy by wagging his tail, as
if he would wriggle his body in two, and looking up into my face over
his shoulder to shew his pleasure. As I had nearly finished my sketch I
thought I would humour him, and avoid taking cold by sitting too long in
the cool atmosphere among the damp rocks. With this thought in my mind I
turned round to fetch my colours and sketch, when suddenly near the top
of the island a large block of granite, about the size of a thirty-six
gallon barrel became detached, and commenced a downward career, crashing
all before it in its course. I paused and watched it, waiting to see it
bury itself with a mighty splash in the sea.

It descended in leaps and bounds with increasing velocity, till, with a
final rise it launched itself upon the very stone on which I was sitting
a minute before, and with a sharp crash broke it completely in two,
hurling the pieces and itself the next instant into the sea!

My sketch went with the rocky seat, and but for the intervention of my
dog I should have been _killed_ first and drowned _afterwards_. My
colours, lying on the ground a foot away, were uninjured.

What is the interpretation of this? It might be said that the previous
heavy rains had loosened the rock, and the warm sunshine having swelled
the mass of the earth beneath, had overbalanced it, and thus nearly
brought about a catastrophe. But what of the dog's warning? It was
_strange_, that is all the solution I can give. As a Norfolk labourer
once said to me when I was pumping him upon the subject of superstition,

"Master, there's more things about than we knows of about both by day
and night."

Perhaps there are, and if they are _things_ of _good_, so much the
better. We know of hypnotism, psychic force, spiritualism, thought
reading, and other occult sciences which appear to produce nothing very
grand as results for _good_, but who shall say there is not some
"Guiding Good" which can (even against our wills) warn us, or sway our
minds in a given direction or in some way influence our movements, by
means _outside ourselves_?

Sometimes after dark, with a half gale blowing, I have fancied all kinds
of things were about, of which the eye or ear might get indistinct
glimpses, and with the wind sighing and moaning among the trees and
rocks and my solitary life also taken into consideration, was this to be