A few years afterwards, the same gentleman, sitting one night at twelve o'clock with a sick brother, heard a noise, as of the driving of nails into a coffin, in the workshop of an undertaker, who was a neighbour. The gentleman thought it was very unkind of the undertaker, an intimate acquaintance of the sick person, to disturb him. As soon as the noise of nail-driving ceased, other and more disagreeable sounds reached his ears. The street door was opened, and, as he thought, two or three men went upstairs with a coffin. He naturally suspected that all this was a forerunner of his brother's death; and so it turned out to be. The invalid died next day at noon. Those who live in our time may think that the gentleman was insane, and that what he heard resulted from him having a diseased brain. If he was labouring under delusions, others must have been deranged too; for it was not uncommon in those days for an undertaker and his family to be advised of an early order to make a coffin by the sound of planes and hammers at work in the workshop. Gravediggers were not without their early notices of funerals. Sometimes the church bell would toll at midnight, the graveyard gate would be thrown open by unseen hands, and a living form be seen to enter alone; or it might be that the whole funeral cortege which would appear in the flesh a few days later, could be observed in spirit in the dreary hours of night. If the deceased person had lived a good and holy life, his spectre appeared in a pleasant, comely form; but if his career was a wicked one, he passed in a hideous shape, probably attended by infernal spirits. CHAPTER XLII. Ornithomancy--Mohammed's Pigeons--A Gigantic Fowl--Cock-crowing--Sacred Geese saving a City--Phenomenon at Rome before Cæsar's Death--Young Swallows--Virtue of a Goose's Tongue--Crows' Hearts--Divination by means of a Sieve--Detection of Crime--Capnomancy--Catoptromancy--Dactyliomancy-- Cledonism--Onomancy--Names--Romans toasting their Mistresses--How Success in War was ascertained--Loss of Ships' Colours--Importance attached to Regimental Standards--Consecrated Banners--Flag of the Prophet--Battle of the Standard--A Highland Superstition.