physical brain may be an
indefinite presage of coming disaster. Again, there are cases in which
a premonition is not the work of the Ego at all, but of some outside
entity, who for some reason takes a friendly interest in the person to
whom the feeling comes. In the work which I quoted above, Mr. Stead
tells us of the certainty which he felt many months beforehand that be
would be left in charge of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ though from an
ordinary point of view nothing seemed less probable. Whether that
fore-knowledge was the result of an impression made by his own Ego or
of a friendly hint from someone else it is impossible to say without
definite investigation, but his confidence in it was fully justified.

There is one more variety of clairvoyance in time which ought not to
be left without mention. It is a comparatively rare one, but there
are enough examples on record to claim our attention, though
unfortunately the particulars given do not usually include those which
we should require in order to be able to diagnose it with certainty. I
refer to the cases in which spectral armies or phantom flocks of
animals have been seen. In _The Night Side of Nature_ (p. 462 _et
seq._) we have accounts of several such visions. We are there told how
at Havarah Park, near Ripley, a body of soldiers in white uniform,
amounting to several hundreds, was seen by reputable people to go
through various evolutions and then vanish; and how some years earlier
a similar visionary army was seen in the neighbourhood of Inverness by
a respectable farmer and his son.

In this case also the number of troops was very great, and the
spectators had not the slightest doubt at first that they were
substantial forms of flesh and blood. They counted at least sixteen
pairs of columns, and had abundance of time to observe every
particular. The front ranks marched seven abreast, and were
accompanied by a good many women and children, who were carrying tin
cans and other implements of cookery. The men were clothed in red, and
their arms shone brightly in the sun. In the midst of them was an
animal, a deer or a horse, they could not distinguish which, that they
were driving furiously forward with their bayonets.

The younger of the two men observed to the other that every now and
then the rear ranks were obliged to run to overtake the van; and the
elder one, who had been a soldier, remarked that that was always the
case, and recommended him if he ever serv