“I never noticed; I don’t remember.  ‘Psychically,’ as you superstitious muffs call it, Bolter was still more queer.  At that time we were all gone on spirit-rapping.  Bolter turned out a great acquisition, ‘medium,’ or what not.  Mind you, I’m not saying Bolter was straight.  In the dark he’d tell you what you had in your hand, exact time of your watch, and so on.  I didn’t take stock in this, and one night brought some photographs with me, and asked for a description of them.  This he gave correctly, winding up by saying, ‘The one nearest your body is that of —–­’”

Here my friend named a person well known to both of us, whose name I prefer not to introduce here.  This person, I may add, had never been in or near the island, and was totally unknown to Bolter.

“Of course,” my friend went on, “the photographs were all the time inside my pocket.  Now, really, Bolter had some mystic power of seeing in the dark.”

“Hyperaesthesia!” said I.

“Hypercriticism!” said the Beach-comber.

“What happened next might be hyperaesthesia—­I suppose you mean abnormal intensity of the senses—­but how could hyperaesthesia see through a tweed coat and lining?”

“Well, what happened next?”

“Bolter’s firm used to get sheep by every mail from —–­, and send them regularly to their station, six miles off.  One time they landed late in the afternoon, and yet were foolishly sent off, Bolter in charge.  I said at the time he would lose half the lot, as it would be dark long before he could reach the station.  He didn’t lose them!

“Next day I met one of the niggers who was sent to lend him a hand, and asked results.

“‘Master,’ said the nigger, ’Bolter is a devil!  He sees at night.  When the sheep ran away to right or left in the dark, he told us where to follow.’”

“He heard them, I suppose,” said I.

“Maybe, but you must be sharp to have sharper senses than these niggers.  Anyhow, that was not Bolter’s account of it.  When I saw him and spoke to him he said simply, ’Yes, that when excited or interested to seek or find anything in obscurity the object became covered with a dim glow of light, which rendered it visible’.  ’But things in a pocket.’  ‘That also,’ said he.  ’Curious isn’t it?  Probably the Rontgen rays are implicated therein, eh?’”

“Did you ever read Dr. Gregory’s Letters on Animal Magnetism?”

“The cove that invented Gregory’s Mixture?”

“Yes.”

“Beast he must have been.  No, I never read him.”

“He says that Major Buckley’s hypnotised subjects saw hidden objects in a blue light—­mottoes inside a nut, for example.”