had had a strange experience: he had seen
the form of his father, as he had seen him that Sunday afternoon, in the
midst of the surrounding light. He was as certain of the truth of the
presentation as if a gradual revival of memory had brought with it the
clear conviction of its own accuracy. His explanation of the phenomenon
was, that, in some cases, all that prevents a vivid conception from
assuming objectivity, is the self-assertion of external objects. The
gradual approach of darkness cannot surprise and isolate the phantasm;
but the suddenness of the lightning could and did, obliterating
everything without, and leaving that over which it had no power standing
alone, and therefore visible.

'But,' I ventured to ask, 'whence the minuteness of detail, surpassing,
you say, all that your memory could supply?'

'That I think was a quickening of the memory by the realism of the
presentation. Excited by the vision, it caught at its own past, as it
were, and suddenly recalled that which it had forgotten. In the rapidity
of all pure mental action, this at once took its part in the apparent
objectivity.'

To return to the narrative of my first evening in Falconer's company.

It was strange how insensible the street population was to the grandeur
of the storm. While the thunder was billowing and bellowing over and
around us--

'A hundred pins for one ha'penny,' bawled a man from the gutter, with
the importance of a Cagliostro.

'Evening Star! Telegrauwff!' roared an ear-splitting urchin in my very
face. I gave him a shove off the pavement.

'Ah! don't do that,' said Falconer. 'It only widens the crack between
him and his fellows--not much, but a little.'

'You are right,' I said. 'I won't do it again.'

The same moment we heard a tumult in a neighbouring street. A crowd
was execrating a policeman, who had taken a woman into custody, and was
treating her with unnecessary rudeness. Falconer looked on for a few
moments.

'Come, policeman!' he said at length, in a tone of expostulation.
'You're rather rough, are you not? She's a woman, you know.'

'Hold your blasted humbug,' answered the man, an exceptional specimen of
the force at that time at all events, and shook the tattered wretch, as
if he would shake her out of her rags.

Falconer gently parted the crowd, and stood beside the two.

'I will help you,' he said, 'to take her to the station, if you like,
but you must not treat her that way.'

'I don't want you