vigilance. No. 2 is based in part on the writer's experience.

If the roads and neighbourhood had been patrolled, and exposure to
possible hypnotists avoided, the phenomena would have ceased. The
gentleman who wrote to the _Times_ made a point or two that were too
petty to notice, and was probably disagreeable to Miss Freer, but
detective work would have been useful. The gentleman's connection with a
class of men, the mad doctors whom the late Sir William Gull so rightly
despised, and whose observations have been so unscientific, may perhaps
have unduly prejudiced Miss Freer against him. Yet people have listened
to a Maudsley against an Esher, and gone to the other extreme. Perhaps
Miss Freer will reconsider her opinion, that hypnotism is for doctors
only to study.

To wind up with a statement of what the writer believes to have been the
object of the rascals about B----; ordinary thought-transfer probably
precedes audible speech by hypnotic influence.

The many people who hear their names called, and find that no death or
other striking occurrence coincides in time with this, are perhaps being
experimented on by hypnotists, who somehow or other, perhaps by community
of feeling, have hit upon the precise moment of a state of subconscious
expectation that makes transfer of an actual word easier.

Of course people, friends or others, about the victim are an antidote to
influences. The inevitable tendency of pious natures, sensitive people
who are indispensable to society, is to self-blame. In misfortune they
would always blame themselves as sinners who deserved punishment,
probably from having paid previously an undeserved attention to the
censorious. Their frame of mind is very contrary to the gospel teaching,
and to science; but the division of labour is moral as well as material;
one man takes the kicks undeservedly, another the halfpence undeservedly.
These gentle people can thus be driven into apparently insane acts, if
they have fools about them.

The fact of the name Ishbel being transferred to the inquirers assembled
at Ballechin, may indicate whose was the spirit that should profess to
preach to victims. Women are often said to be worse, if evil, than men,
and they play this ugly role better.

That rain interrupted the phenomena is another point against the
partisans of the supernatural. When after rain the nun was surprised and
chased by Miss Freer, it would seem that she intended mischief to some
other me