from his
course and entering a public-house. He comes within the radius of the
sinister influences, which I can see and feel hanging around the saloon.
Their shadowy, silent brain power at once comes into play and gains
ascendancy over his weaker will. He halts because he is "willed" to do
so. A tempting tableau of drink rises before him and he at once imagines
he is thirsty. Soft and fascinating elemental hands close over his and
draw him gently aside. A look of beastly satisfaction suffuses his eyes.
He smacks his lips, hastens his steps, the bar-room door closes behind
him, and, for the remaining hours of the day, he wallows in drink.

But the unknown brain does not confine itself to the neighbourhood of a
public-house--it may be anywhere. I have, intuitively, felt its presence
on the deserted moors of Cornwall, between St Ives and the Land's End;
in the grey Cornish churches and chapels (very much in the latter);
around the cold and dismal mouths of disused mine-shafts; all along the
rocky North Cornish coast; on the sea; at various spots on different
railway lines, both in the United Kingdom and abroad; and, of course, in
multitudinous places in London.

A year or so ago, I called on Mrs de B----, a well-known society lady,
at that time residing in Cadogan Gardens. The moment I entered her
drawing-room, I became aware of an occult presence that seemed to be
hovering around her. Wherever she moved, it moved with her, and I FELT
that its strange, fathomless, enigmatical eyes were fixed on her,
noting and guiding her innermost thoughts and her every action with
inexorable persistence.

Some six months later, I met Lady D----, a friend in common, and in
answer to my inquiries concerning Mrs de B----, was informed that she
had just been divorced. "Dorothy" (_i.e._ Mrs de B----), Lady D---- went
on to explain, "had been all right till she took up spiritualism, but
directly she began to attend seances everything seemed to go wrong with
her. At last she quarrelled with her husband, the climax being reached
when she became violently infatuated with an officer in the Guards. The
result was a decree _nisi_ with heavy costs." I exhibited, perhaps, more
surprise than I felt. But the fact of Mrs de B---- having attended
seances explained everything. She was obviously a woman with a naturally
weak will, and had fallen under the influence of one of the lowest, and
most dangerous types of earth-bound spirits, the type that so of