star of Bethlehem, and the rest of the wonders? Do you remember that?'

'Yes,' I said.

And do you remember, too,' he went on, how we extended that idea and suggested to each other (I forget who was the first discoverer, but he was mighty proud of himself at the time) that if we were travelling away from the earth just a little faster than the light, we should see (always supposing still that we had infinite powers of vision) events happening not in their present order but in the reverse order? We should see the bullet coming out of the man's body and going back into the muzzle of the gun, and so on. We should see a man diving into the water; but he would appear to us not going down off the diving-board into the water, but coming up out of the water to the diving-board. We should see the Derby being run, but the horses going backwards. Do you remember how we multiplied instances of that kind, how interested we were, and yet what a little shock it seemed to give us, for the time being, to find all our previous ideas of time and space, of before and after, so badly upset? There is not an act that has been done since the world began, we concluded, if you remember, that is not photographed for us at some point in space if only we could get there with our infinite vision to regard it. The thought frightened us rather at the time.'

'Yes, I can remember all that,' I said.

'If you can imagine,' he went on, 'that at Lhasa speculations of this kind, or beginning with this as a kind of alphabet, have been continued for countless ages, not by schoolboys or undergraduates, not haphazard, but by grown men who have devoted their lives to speculation and recorded its results, beginning on the previous results recorded in the same way by generations of speculators who have gone before; if you can realise this you may believe, perhaps, that they have discovered facts even a little more remarkable than some that we patted ourselves on the back so warmly for discovering when we were undergraduates at Oxford.' 'Yes,' I said, 'I dare say.'

And the climate favours speculative research. You laughed at me a while back when I said that one wanted sympathy in one climate more than another. What is sympathy but your animal magnetism—to use your Western phrases? And do not you know that "hypnotism"-again, to use your word-is found of very much more value in the hospitals in Calcutta than it is in this country?'

I had to confess that I had heard something of the sort.

And that climate of the wind-swept Thibetan plateau seems, for reasons that I need not speak of, even if I dimly understand them, most favourable for the acquirement of knowledge and advancement of speculation in the trance state, which is the most favourable state of all for the human soul's investigation of the secrets of Nature.'

'I am coming to that,' he said; I knew that with your "solid British common sense "'—he smiled a gently ironical smile — you would want to know what good material thing, what slice of roast beef or plum pudding, was to be yours after all this. I came to you to give you a gift. Every man desires something. Consider that I have come to you like the fairy godmother in the tale, and can give you a picture of anything that will happen in the course of the world to come. It is no miracle, this, my friend. The soul of man, as I have told you, belongs to the universal soul, but by virtue of the arrangement of the particles of the man it has come to have life and a special intelligence. In virtue of this the soul of man is able, when his body lies in trance and is then soulless, to pass into other particles and reconstruct (I use the word re-construct, but pre-construct would be more correct) any arrangement of particles that will take place in the world. And when the soul returns to his body and the man rises from his trance, he will have knowledge of the thing that his soul in its wanderings has pre-constructed. Only, I must give you this warning, you may see one thing only, one revelation of a thing that is to be. I'm not allowed to show you more.'

'But,' I said, aghast, 'I see it! How should I see it? I have heard of wonderful things, indeed, done in the East by men in a trance. If they are not sheer imposture they transcend miracles. But all the conjurors, or miracle-mongers, or whatever they are, say that it requires years of preparation, of fasting, of praying— heaven knows what all-to do it. I can't do that, I am too old. Besides, I have just bought a lot of light port, very good port, at Christie's. It wants drinking at once. Forgive me if I am talking rubbish. I dare say I am; but, you know, your Eastern ideas are a little bit disconcerting to us.'

'I dare say they are,' he replied apologetically. 'Oh, you may drink your port all right. I dare say you have seen, in the stage exhibitions of mesmerism, a practised performer enable a novice

to induce the mesmeric trance, or get the patient to obey, by laying his fingers on the novice's wrists. It is somewhat after this manner that I will enable you to see the vision that you ask for. I shall first put you into a trance, and I shall then put myself into the same state, in order to see that which you desire to When you are in that condition I shall be able to communicate the experience to you.'

see.

'It doesn't hurt at all, I suppose, does it?' I asked, doubtfully. He laughed. I had not known before that a mystic could realise the humorous side of things so fully.

'Absolutely painless, I promise you,' he said, rather as my dentist says it.

I am not in the habit of going into the trance state, you know.'

'No,' he said, taking me quite seriously, but I shall be able to put you into it easily enough.'

'The deuce you will!' I answered.

'Only with your consent,' he added, to relieve me of my fears. Without it I should probably be powerless.'

6

'I am glad to hear it,' I replied. But what makes you think I shall give that consent?'

'Only the curiosity, or the desire of gain, or of power, that is innate in every man,' he said. 'And now,' he added, rising from his chair, I am going. In two nights hence, at the same time, I will be here again. By then you will have decided, no doubt, what scene, or whatever it may be, in the future you desire to see, and that very same evening your wish shall be gratified.'

'Have I to go into any particular training for the event?' I asked, more than half in joke,

'Only be moderately sober, that is all I have to stipulate,' he replied, in the same vein. 'If you were not I might have a trouble in putting you into the trance.'

'I'll do my best to keep sober, then'; and with that and a laugh I wished him good-night.

He was gone, and I had to ask myself what it all meant. I had not been dreaming-the smell of his Indian tobacco still clung about the room. Perhaps he was mad, perhaps he was hoaxing me; but his manner had not favoured either of these alternatives. In any case I was sufficiently interested to be willing to humour his madness, or to acquiesce in his hoax, and, that point settled, began to whip up my imagination to suggest

for me the gift or revelation that I should demand of this strange fairy godmother. It occurred to me that I should like to see myself a few years hence, but I dreaded to ask that. The portrait might not be flattering. Besides, one does not know what a few years may do: there might be no me to portray, no living me; and though this might, perhaps, present no difficulties to the man from Lhasa, still I did not care to put that question. Then I thought of a glimpse at the next great naval battle, or the first feasible flying-machine to be invented. Neither of these seemed outside the contract, each was only a matter of arrangement of particles; and it was wonderful how simple the process seemed as if it ought to be, if only one knew how it was done. A little familiarity with the scheme, and thinking it over, seemed to make that which at first had appeared extravagantly absurd and impossible a simple enough affair. It was only to control the soul that inhered in the particles, and the thing was done.

But all these visions seemed to me too remote, too vast, perhaps not practical enough. Surely, I thought, I could think of something more useful, more profitable, than that. Suppose I were to ask to see the finish of the next year's Derby-there would be money in that if I could be sure of the names of the horses-or a Stock Exchange list of a month ahead, or-suddenly the idea struck me! It was not a new idea. It was an idea even that Dunstan and I had often talked over together in the old Oxford days. It would amuse him to find that old idea taking shape. again in my mind and coming up in tangible, or at least visible, form. During the next two days I amused myself with thinking what I should do when I had my desire and had seen my vision. I grew feverishly impatient, possessed by the one idea alone, and lived only for the moment when Dunstan should come, according to his promise, to my rooms. If he had failed of his promise I think my heart would have broken, so keenly was I set upon the idea; but I knew that he would not fail. Punctual to the appointed moment he arrived, and I cried, almost before I had got him into the room:

'I want you to show me a file of next year's "Times.""

He smiled, with a lack of emotion that was in strange contrast with my own excited state.

'I thought you would be able to think of something that would interest you,' he said.

'But can you do it? That is what I want to know.'

He did not answer for a moment. I told you one thing,' hẽ said then.

'Well, so it is one thing,' I replied impatiently. I only ask for one file-one year's file. Surely that is not much. If you come to hair-splitting like that you might tell me that you would only show me one word.'

6

'Yes,' he said, evidently deliberating the case in his mind. 'Yes, I suppose that is quite fair. I think I can do that for you.' If you would only show it to me for the first half of the year, that would carry it over Derby Day; that would do,' I said, trying to meet him half way.

Oh, no,' he answered, with a smile; 'you shall have it all. I can give you that without exceeding my instructions.'

And what have I got to do? Do let us begin,' I said impatiently.

'You have got to do nothing, absolutely nothing. You have only to leave it all to me. Sit down on that sofa. Now, look into my eyes a moment, and try to resign your will, as you would phrase it, to mine. Thank you, that will do-that

His voice seemed to grow fainter, fainter, farther and farther away. I relapsed, I must presume, into that trance state of which he had told me. I know, by the time of his arrival, that it must have been about 11.45 P.M. when I passed into this unconscious condition. The next thing that I remember was rising from the sofa where I fancied I had been asleep, and glancing at the clock, to find it close on half-past twelve. Before me on the floor I was astonished for a moment to see an enormous pile of newspapers. In an instant the recollection of Dunstan's visit recurred to me. I fell eagerly upon the heap of papers. True to my intensely ardent hope, the top one bore the date of the first day of the following year. A file of next year's 'Times' lay before me.

One does not perhaps realise, without a little reflection, what an enormous power and enormous wealth such a possession as this means to a man. For my own part, during the two preceding days my mind had been occupied with little else, and I had formed my plan of campaign. The remainder of the present year I intended to devote to realising all the ready money that I could lay my hands on, in order to be able to begin speculative operations as soon as the period of my prescience commencedand if possible to obtain a seat in Parliament, in order to satisfy