ppened before I was born," she answered. "THIS is one of them."

"You remember it directly?"

"How impossible! Have I not often explained to you that I am no diviner?
I read no book of fate; I call no spirits from the vasty deep. I simply
remember with exceptional clearness what I read and hear. And I have
many times heard the story about Alfred Faskally."

"So have I--but I forget it."

"Unfortunately, I CAN'T forget. That is a sort of disease with me.... He
was a special constable in the Chartist riots; and being a very strong
and powerful man, like his nephew Hugo, he used his truncheon--his
special constable's baton, or whatever you call it--with excessive force
upon a starveling London tailor in the mob near Charing Cross. The man
was hit on the forehead--badly hit, so that he died almost immediately
of concussion of the brain. A woman rushed out of the crowd at once,
seized the dying man, laid his head on her lap, and shrieked out in
a wildly despairing voice that he was her husband, and the father of
thirteen children. Alfred Faskally, who never meant to kill the man,
or even to hurt him, but who was laying about him roundly, without
realising the terrific force of his blows, was so horrified at what he
had done when he heard the woman's cry, that he rushed off straight to
Waterloo Bridge in an agony of remorse and--flung himself over. He was
drowned instantly."

"I recall the story now," I answered; "but, do you know, as it was told
me, I think they said the mob THREW Faskally over in their desire for
vengeance."

"That is the official account, as told by the Le Geyts and the
Faskallys; they like to have it believed their kinsman was murdered, not
that he committed suicide. But my grandfather"--I started; during the
twelve months that I had been brought into daily relations with Hilda
Wade, that was the first time I had heard her mention any member of her
own family, except once her mother--"my grandfather, who knew him well,
and who was present in the crowd at the time, assured me many times that
Alfred Faskally really jumped over of his own accord, NOT pursued by the
mob, and that his last horrified words as he leaped were, 'I never meant
it! I never meant it!' However, the family have always had luck in their
suicides. The jury believed the throwing-over story, and found a verdict
of 'wilful murder' against some person or persons unknown."

"Luck in their suicides! What a curious phrase! And you say, A