he had often done before); but being busy I did not give way to his solicitations, and went on working.  This did not please him, for he now took hold of my coat sleeve, and gave me a tug, with his eyes at the same time fixed on mine; so, to oblige him, I rose, and went after him to see what wonder he had to shew me.  Contrary to his usual custom he appeared to have nothing for me to see, but seemed pleased to have me follow him, shewing his joy by wagging his tail, as if he would wriggle his body in two, and looking up into my face over his shoulder to shew his pleasure.  As I had nearly finished my sketch I thought I would humour him, and avoid taking cold by sitting too long in the cool atmosphere among the damp rocks.  With this thought in my mind I turned round to fetch my colours and sketch, when suddenly near the top of the island a large block of granite, about the size of a thirty-six gallon barrel became detached, and commenced a downward career, crashing all before it in its course.  I paused and watched it, waiting to see it bury itself with a mighty splash in the sea.

It descended in leaps and bounds with increasing velocity, till, with a final rise it launched itself upon the very stone on which I was sitting a minute before, and with a sharp crash broke it completely in two, hurling the pieces and itself the next instant into the sea!

My sketch went with the rocky seat, and but for the intervention of my dog I should have been killed first and drowned afterwards.  My colours, lying on the ground a foot away, were uninjured.

What is the interpretation of this?  It might be said that the previous heavy rains had loosened the rock, and the warm sunshine having swelled the mass of the earth beneath, had overbalanced it, and thus nearly brought about a catastrophe.  But what of the dog’s warning?  It was strange, that is all the solution I can give.  As a Norfolk labourer once said to me when I was pumping him upon the subject of superstition,

“Master, there’s more things about than we knows of about both by day and night.”

Perhaps there are, and if they are things of good, so much the better.  We know of hypnotism, psychic force, spiritualism, thought reading, and other occult sciences which appear to produce nothing very grand as results for good, but who shall say there is not some “Guiding Good” which can (even against our wills) warn us, or sway our minds in a given direction or in some way influence our movements, by means outside ourselves?

Sometimes after dark, with a half gale blowing, I have fancied all kinds of things were about, of which the eye or ear might get indistinct glimpses, and with the wind sighing and moaning among the trees and rocks and my solitary life also taken into consideration, was this to be wondered at.

Solitude gives latitude for an imaginative mind to expand itself, and for one shut up by himself as I was, trifles are frequently made prominent, simply because there is nothing greater to attract one’s attention and thought.