down the cliff and died with her, had affected his brain. He
was a monomaniac, and all his thoughts were in some way clustered
round the dominant one. He had studied amulets because the 'Moonlight
Cross' had been cherished by her; he came to Switzerland every year
because it was associated with her; he had joined the spiritualist
body in the mad hope that perhaps there might be something in it,
perhaps there might be a power that could call her back to earth.
Even the favourite occupation of his life, visiting cathedrals and
churches and taking rubbings from monumental brasses, had begun
after her death; it had come from the fact (as I soon learned) that
she had taken interest in monumental brasses, and had begun the
collection of rubbings.

And yet this martyr to a mighty passion bore the character of a
dreamy student; and his calm, un-furrowed face, on common occasions,
expressed nothing but a rather dull kind of content! Here was a
revelation of what, afterwards, was often revealed to me, that human
personality is the crowning wonder of this wonderful universe, and
that the forces which turn fire-mist into stars are not more
inscrutable than is human character. He lifted up his head and gazed
at me through his tears.

'Hal,' he said, 'do you know why I have shown you this? It _must_,
MUST be buried with me at my death; and there is no one upon whose
energy, truth, courage, and strength of will I can rely as I can upon
yours. You must give me your word, Hal, that you will see it and this
casket containing her letters buried with me.'

I hesitated to become a party to such an undertaking as this. It
savoured of superstition, I thought. Now, having at that very time
abandoned all the superstitions and all the mystical readings of the
universe which as a child I had inherited from ancestors, Romany and
English, having at that very time begun to take a delight in the
wonderful revelations of modern science, my attitude towards
superstition--towards all super-naturalism--oscillated between anger
and simple contempt.

'But,' I said, 'you surely will not have this beautiful old cross
buried?' And as I looked at it, and the light fell upon it, there
came from it strange flashes of fire, showing with what extraordinary
skill the rubies and diamonds had been adjusted so that their facets
should catch and concentrate the rays of the moon.

'Yes,' he said, taking the cross again in his hand and fondling it
passionately, '