Beyond and after this, I might add, but for its too great length, the indisputable testimony of certain friends of mine as to inexplicable writings on locked slates and paper, the revelation of secrets, nay visible apparitions, and both records of the secret past and revelations of the still more secret future afterwards fulfilled,—­to all which I cannot, as an honest man and a believer in human evidence, refuse to give a distinct testimony, even though conjurors perpetually baffle our confused judgment.

In this connection I will extract from one of my Archive-books the curious story of a mysterious key in which my family are still interested:  for the secret is not yet solved.  In the fourteenth volume, then, of my Archives occurs this long note, accompanied by the drawing which I made years ago of the weird-looking key:  with a loose ring handle, a threefold staircase body, and a strangely ringed column.

“My father died in his sleep, December 8, 1844, at Southwick House, in Windsor Park, on the same night after its owner, Lord Limerick, had also died there in his arms, my father having been his medical friend for thirty years.  My father used to carry in his pocket a strange key, whereof the figure was very unusual, as it folded up, and though large he carried it in his pocket habitually:  and he used to say in his quietly humorous and reserved manner, ‘under that key lies a fortune;’ my mother and I and others remember this well.  When I came to be executor, there was nearly nothing to guide me as to the amount of my father’s property,—­and I certainly did not succeed in realising all that he was supposed to have acquired.  It was wonderful that with his large income he left so little.  So, we all thought that some hoard locked by this key contained the missing treasure; my father’s habitual taciturnity, and secretiveness favouring this idea.  But, nowhere could the lock to fit it be found; nowhere either at banks or lawyers or anywhere about our old house in Burlington Street or at Albury, appeared the chest or cupboard containing the fancied accumulations; and to this hour, June 12, 1873, nearly thirty years after my father’s sudden death, has the mystery not been cleared up.  Once, on an occasion of a spiritualistic seance at Mr. Carter Hall’s, I handed the said key to Mr. Home when entranced, and he shuddered at it, and uttered the name ’Elizabeth Henderson,’—­which I thought at the time a bad guess, as one utterly unknown to me:  but oddly enough it proved to be the name of the Queen’s housekeeper at Windsor.  However, on inquiry nothing further came of this, for she was not in office when my father died at the Park.  To-day I have taken the key to a Miss Hudson, a clairvoyante, who never saw me before, nor was told my name, nor my errand, except that I laid that key silently before her.  She can tell me very little, except that the mystery is soon to be cleared up, and that certain spirits (from description possibly