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. The wind sweeping among the rocks in a gale, will at times, form at it were, notes or peculiar noises, which will, with other sounds of rustling branches, the cry of wild fowl and the beat of the sea on the shore, all taking place concurrently, cause the listener to imagine he hears voices. Again, who has not, when walking by a noisy babbling brook, where it falls among rocks and other impediments in a quiet place, heard as he has thought voices as of persons conversing at a distance? Many trout-fishers will have heard these sounds, and know the reason of their being heard; they can fully explain the cause, but I doubt if they could explain the curious experiences related in this chapter. [Illustration: Decorative scroll] FOOTNOTE: