and I dashed in his face some water which I fortunately had in my flask, while another tried to pour brandy between his clenched teeth; and under cover of it I whispered to the man next to me (one of our greatest skeptics, by the way), ‘Beauchamp, did you hear anything?’ ‘Why, yes,’ he replied, ’a curious sound, very; a sort of crash or rattle far away in the distance, yet very distinct; if the thing were not utterly impossible, I could have sworn that it was the rattle of musketry.’  ‘Just my impression,’ murmured I; ‘but hush! he is recovering.’

“In a minute or two he was able to speak feebly, and began to thank us and apologize for giving trouble; and soon he sat up, leaning against a tree, and in a firm, though low voice said:  ’My dear friends, I feel that I owe you an explanation of my extraordinary behavior.  It is an explanation that I would fain avoid giving; but it must come some time, and so may as well be given now.  You may perhaps have noticed that when during our voyage you all joined in scoffing at dreams, portents and visions, I invariably avoided giving any opinion on the subject.  I did so because, while I had no desire to court ridicule or provoke discussion, I was unable to agree with you, knowing only too well from my own dread experience that the world which men agree to call that of the supernatural is just as real as—­nay, perhaps even more real than—­this world we see about us.  In other words, I, like many of my countrymen, am cursed with the gift of second-sight—­that awful faculty which foretells in vision calamities that are shortly to occur.

“’Such a vision I had just now, and its exceptional horror moved me as you have seen.  I saw before me a corpse—­not that of one who has died a peaceful, natural death, but that of the victim of some terrible accident; a ghastly, shapeless mass, with a face swollen, crushed, unrecognizable.  I saw this dreadful object placed in a coffin, and the funeral service performed over it.  I saw the burial-ground, I saw the clergyman:  and though I had never seen either before, I can picture both perfectly in my mind’s eye now; I saw you, myself, Beauchamp, all of us and many more, standing round as mourners; I saw the soldiers raise their muskets after the service was over; I heard the volley they fired—­and then I knew no more.’  As he spoke of that volley of musketry I glanced across with a shudder at Beauchamp, and the look of stony horror on that handsome skeptic’s face was not to be forgotten.”

Omitting the somewhat long recital of events which followed, I would say that later in the same day the party of young officers and soldiers discovered the body of their commanding officer in the shocking condition so vividly and graphically described by young Cameron.  The story proceeds as follows: