‘January 28, 1898.’

‘A great black ship,’ anchored in ‘a river or lake,’ naturally suggests the Suez Canal, where, in fact, Mr. Pembroke’s brother was just arriving, as was proved by a letter received from him eight days after the experiment was recorded, on January 31.  At that date Mr. Pembroke had not yet been told the nature of Miss Angus’s crystal picture, nor had she any knowledge of his brother’s whereabouts.

In February 1898, Miss Angus again came to the place where I was residing.  We visited together the scene of an historical crime, and Miss Angus looked into the glass ball.  It was easy for her to ‘visualise’ the incidents of the crime (the murder of Cardinal Beaton), for they are familiar enough to many people.  What she did see in the ball was a tall, pale lady, ‘about forty, but looking thirty-five,’ with hair drawn back from the brows, standing beside a high chair, dressed in a wide farthingale of stiff grey brocade, without a ruff.  The costume corresponds well (as we found) with that of 1546, and I said, ’I suppose it is Mariotte Ogilvy’—­to whom Miss Angus’s historical knowledge (and perhaps that of the general public) did not extend.  Mariotte was the Cardinal’s lady-love, and was in the Castle on the night before the murder, according to Knox.  She had been in my mind, whence (on the theory of thought transference) she may have passed to Miss Angus’s mind; but I had never speculated on Mariotte’s costume.  Nothing but conjecture, of course, comes of these apparently ‘retrospective’ pictures; though a most singular and picturesque coincidence occurred, which may be told in a very different connection.

The next example was noted at the same town.  The lady who furnishes it is well known to me, and it was verbally corroborated by Miss Angus, to whom the lady, her absent nephew, and all about her, were entirely strange.

’VIII.—­I was very anxious to know whether my nephew would be sent to India this year, so I told Miss Angus that I had thought of something, and asked her to look in the glass ball.  She did so, but almost immediately turned round and looked out of the window at the sea, and said, “I saw a ship so distinctly I thought it must be a reflection.”  She looked in the ball again, and said, “It is a large ship, and it is passing a huge rock with a lighthouse on it.  I can’t see who are on the ship, but the sky is very clear and blue.  Now I see a large building, something like a club, and in front there are a great many people sitting and walking about.  I think it must be some place abroad, for the people are all dressed in very light clothes, and it seems to be very sunny and warm.  I see a young man sitting on a chair, with his feet straight out before him.  He is not talking to anyone, but seems to be listening to something.  He is dark and slight, and not very tall; and his eyebrows are dark and very distinctly marked.”

’I had not had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angus before, and she knew nothing whatever about my nephew; but the young man described was exactly like him, both in his appearance and in the way he was sitting.’