ot a real
paving-stone at all but a mere paper imitation, with an actually
measureless gulf below it. The delusion was so real and convincing that
I was able to pursue my way only by the most desperate resolution, and
all the way to Fitzroy Square, where I was living at the time, the fear
clung to me. I took a liberal dose of whisky, went to bed and slept the
clock round, and woke to find the whole thing vanished.

I spent five happy years at Rochefort, and although when I first went
there I had no idea of staying for more than three or four weeks' rest
and quiet, it was actually eighteen months before I left the place at
all.

In dealing with my experiences in the Press gallery of the House of
Commons, I had occasion to speak of the curious premonition which
assailed me at the instant at which the unfortunate Dr Kenealy made use
of the rhetorical symbol of the dewdrops and the lion's mane. I do
not know that I have any right to claim the possession of any psychic
faculty which goes beyond the ordinary, but I do know that that sort
of premonition of a coming circumstance has not been at all rare in
my experience. Something very like it befell me whilst I was living at
Rochefort, and in that instance it proved of signal service to me, I
wrote the final scene of _Joseph's Coat_ on a certain wintry day and was
within a page or two of the conclusion of the story when I was called to
luncheon. In the ardour of work I had allowed the fire to die out in my
bedroom stove, and encountering on the stairs a certain lout, whose
name was Victor, who did duty about the stables of the hotel, I gave
him instructions to see to it. Ten minutes later a dreadful inspiration
occurred to me, and I dashed upstairs. The man was kneeling before
the stove and was in the very act of striking a lucifer match when I
arrived. A glance at my writing-table showed me that the impulse on
which I had acted was only too well-founded. The man had taken a dozen
pages of my manuscript, and an instant later he would have set them
blazing. In those days I wrote on an unruled large quarto, and since
it was my habit to crowd sixteen hundred words into a page, the loss of
time and labour would have been, at least, considerable. I recovered my
MS. all crumpled and dirty, and I applied to that ostler pretty nearly
all the opprobrious names in his language with which I was acquainted.
"Mais, monsieur," the criminal responded, "le papier etait deja gate;
vous avez