What had prompted me to put that sudden question to the chambermaid? I could not tell. In the moment of waking, slipping out of bed and opening the door, no recollection had come to me of my earlier experience, but betwixt that experience and my abrupt waking at her knock knowledge must have been somehow afforded me of the tragedy. I knew a man had done himself to death in that room shortly before I occupied it. A day or two afterwards I read an account of the inquest held upon the body. A rankling sense of unjust treatment had preyed upon his brain. Suicide whilst of unsound mind was the verdict. Poor "army gentleman," I fear I could have been of little service to you, even if I had opened up some form of communication between myself and your disembodied soul! When one remembers how many persons occupy even one room in a hotel in twelve months, it seems natural that psychic phenomena should be common to such houses. Undoubtedly many tragedies must be enacted in every hotel within a comparatively short space of time, and one may, in utter unconsciousness, occupy a bedroom in which, but the night before, murder or suicide has taken place. Some years ago, I had occasion to pass a night in one of the big West End hotels of London. It was very full, and I had to be content with a very indifferent room on the main entrance floor, and looking to the back. The window had iron bars in front of it, through which one could slip one's head, but not one's shoulders. The reason for the bars was obvious. A wide mews ran on a level with this floor of the house, and failing this obstruction any one could have stepped with perfect ease from the pavement into the room. Thrusting my head through the bars I could see from end to end of the mews. On the left there was no exit, on the right was a narrow lane running down the side of the hotel, and leading into the main thoroughfare. The mews seemed very quiet, clean and respectable, and for one night only I decided that the room would do. I was very tired after passing two nights in a train, and went early to bed and fell asleep at once. I ascertained afterwards that I had been sleeping for five hours, when I was suddenly awakened by a loud noise of scuffling feet, accompanied by a gurgling choking sound, as if some one was struggling to find utterance, to gain breath. To be awakened by a noise out of a sound sleep is always a startling, uncomfortable experience. If the astral body has been wandering far afield, it has to return to the physical body in far too great a hurry for comfort. There is always more or less of a dislocating jar under such circumstances. The startled sensation is greatly accentuated when, in place of waking to dead silence, one awakens to unaccountable and very unpleasant sounds.