y known physical
facts, is in the view of science a hallucination, every hallucination
is not a ghost for the purposes of story-telling. The hallucination
must, for story-telling purposes, be _veracious_.

Following our usual method, we naturally begin with the anecdotes
least trying to the judicial faculties, and most capable of an
ordinary explanation. Perhaps of all the senses, the sense of touch,
though in some ways the surest, is in others the most easily deceived.
Some people who cannot call up a clear mental image of things seen,
say a saltcellar, can readily call up a mental revival of the feeling
of touching salt. Again, a slight accidental throb, or leap of a
sinew or vein, may feel so like a touch that we turn round to see who
touched us. These familiar facts go far to make the following tale
more or less conceivable.

THE RESTRAINING HAND

"About twenty years ago," writes Mrs. Elliot, "I received some letters
by post, one of which contained 15 pounds in bank notes. After
reading the letters I went into the kitchen with them in my hands. I
was alone at the time. . . . Having done with the letters, I made an
effort to throw them into the fire, when I distinctly felt my hand
arrested in the act. It was as though another hand were gently laid
upon my own, pressing it back. Much surprised, I looked at my hand
and then saw it contained, not the letters I had intended to destroy,
but the bank notes, and that the letters were in the other hand. I
was so surprised that I called out, 'Who's here?'" {80a}

Nobody will call this "the touch of a vanished hand". Part of Mrs.
Elliot's mind knew what she was about, and started an unreal but
veracious feeling to warn her. We shall come to plenty of Hands not
so readily disposed of.

Next to touch, the sense most apt to be deceived is hearing. Every
one who has listened anxiously for an approaching carriage, has often
heard it come before it came. In the summer of 1896 the writer, with
a lady and another companion, were standing on the veranda at the back
of a house in Dumfriesshire, waiting for a cab to take one of them to
the station. They heard a cab arrive and draw up, went round to the
front of the house, saw the servant open the door and bring out the
luggage, but wheeled vehicle there was none in sound or sight. Yet
all four persons had heard it, probably by dint of expectation.

To hear articulate voices where there are none is extremely common