A few days later the new birds and the old ones had amalgamated, and twelve little swallows floated in the air before my eyes. I could not see them in the house. It needed the background of uninterrupted sky apparently to throw them into sufficient relief to be recognised. After some years, this special sign was withdrawn, and others have taken its place. For example, I have seen in the same way, during the last fourteen years, an anchor, with the chain attached to it, and caught through one end of the former, a short reaping hook. This, doubtless, has some symbolical meaning. Near the anchor I see a sacrificial altar, with flames rising up from it; then a triangle, with loops at the corners, which I was once told was the sign of Nostradamus. Then an old-fashioned mirror in a quaintly-shaped frame, and finally a long staff, with the sign of Aries at one end. I have since realised that this is very much like the "Staff of Faith" found on the top of many of the tombs in the Roman catacombs. All these latter emblems come together as a rule, with a connecting thread binding them to each other. I cannot see them at will, but when the atmosphere is at all clear they are rarely absent, when I have time to look for them. I was much amused once by an earnest Christian scientist, with whom I happened to be spending a few days on the coast of the eastern counties. She had warned me repeatedly against "phenomena" of every kind, spontaneous or induced. On a specially bright morning we were sitting together in a beautiful park, which is thrown open to strangers on special days, and, forgetting my companion's prejudices, I exclaimed involuntarily: "I never saw my signs more clearly than just now!--there must be something very pure about the atmosphere." This was too much for my friend, who bent forward eagerly, saying:--"_Do let me try if I cannot see them too!_" Well, she "tried" for the greater part of two hours, but absolutely in vain, and then got up, and suggested going home to luncheon. She added naively: "I _thought_ they must have something wrong about them, and I am quite sure of it now, _or I should have seen them_." But it had taken her two hours of failure to be absolutely convinced that they came straight from the devil! One sign--also birds--appeared to me on one occasion only. We had returned to Denver, where Miss Greenlow and I were to separate after a year's constant travel together. She was going back to San Francisco to take steamer for the Sandwich Islands, and thence on to Australia; whilst I was returning to England for family reasons. I had arranged to dine with the hospitable Dean of Denver the evening of the day of her departure, and I had not realised how much less lonely one would have felt had my journey East corresponded more closely with her journey West, especially as she was obliged to leave the hotel about nine o'clock in the morning.