Some of the “communications” came back in memory, none the less, as I lay beside the little lake and watched the firelight reflected with the stars: “There is an Indian here; he says he comes for you. He is a medicine man. He says you are one, too. You have great healing power. He keeps repeating the word ‘scratch.’” The dubious word meant “write”; I was to become a writer, a prophesy that woke no interest in me at all.... Another communication delved into the past: “You have been an Indian in a recent life, and you will go back to their country to work off certain painful Karma. You were Aztec, Inca, Egyptian, and, before that again, Atlantean. With the world to-day you have nothing in common, for none of the souls you knew have come back with you. Nature means more to you than human beings. Beware!” The last word alarmed me a good deal until the doctor’s humorous exposition killed any malefic suggestion. The horoscope his wife cast and read for me, however, he refused to be bothered with; he could not, therefore, comfort me by explaining away a disturbing sentence: “All your planets are beneficent, but were just below the horizon at the hour of your birth. This means that you will come very near to success in all you undertake, yet never quite achieve it.” These memories slipped in their series across my mind, as the embers of my fire faded and the night drew on. Swiftly they came and passed, each leaving its little trail of dust, its faint emotion, yet leading always to a stronger ghost whose memory still bulked largely in my mind--the ghost of a Hindu student. He was a fourth-year man, about to become a qualified doctor, and I met him first in the dissecting room, where occasionally I played at studying anatomy. We first became intimate friends over the dissection of a leg. It was he who explained “Patanjali” to me. He was a very gifted and unusual being. He showed me strange methods of breathing, of concentration, of meditation. He made clear a thousand half-conscious dreams and memories in me. He was mysterious but sincere, living his theories in practice. We went for great walks along the Forth, watching the Forth Bridge then being built; down the coast to St. Abb’s Head and Coldingham; deep into the recesses of the Pentlands, where, more than once, we slept in the open. We made curious and interesting experiments together.... Years later--he is still alive--I drew upon a fraction of his personality in two books, “John Silence” and “Julius Le Vallon.”...