He was standing near a bath over the earl, and strange
to say, his beard was red. There was the bath with the red lamp over
it. It is rather rare to find a bath with a red lamp over it, and
this brought the story to my mind. . . ."

This account, written in 1888, has been revised by the late Duke of
Manchester, father of the Duchess of Hamilton, who heard the vision
from his daughter on the morning after she had seen it.

The duchess only knew the earl by sight, and had not heard that he was
ill. She knew she was not asleep, for she opened her eyes to get rid
of the vision, and, shutting them, saw the same thing again. {45a}

In fact, the "vision" was an illusion hypnagogique. Probably most
readers know the procession of visions which sometimes crowd on the
closed eyes just before sleep. {45b} They commonly represent with
vivid clearness unknown faces or places, occasionally known faces.
The writer has seen his own in this way and has occasionally "opened
his eyes to get rid of" the appearances. In his opinion the pictures
are unconsciously constructed by the half-sleeping mind out of blurs
of light or dark seen with closed eyes. Mr. Cooper's story would be
more complete if he had said whether or not the earl, when visited by
him, was in a chair as in the vision. But beds are not commonly found
in bathrooms.

THE SCAR IN THE MOUSTACHE

This story was told to the writer by his old head-master, the Rev. Dr.
Hodson, brother of Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, a person whom I never
heard make any other allusion to such topics. Dr. Hodson was staying
with friends in Switzerland during the holidays. One morning, as he
lay awake, he seemed to see into a room as if the wall of his bedroom
had been cut out. In the room were a lady well known to him and a man
whom he did not know. The man's back was turned to the looker-on.
The scene vanished, and grew again. Now the man faced Dr. Hodson; the
face was unfamiliar, and had a deep white scar seaming the moustache.
Dr. Hodson mentioned the circumstance to his friends, and thought
little of it. He returned home, and, one day, in Perth station, met
the lady at the book-stall. He went up to accost her, and was
surprised by the uneasiness of her manner. A gentleman now joined
them, with a deep white scar through his moustache. Dr. Hodson now
recalled, what had slipped his memory, that the lady during his
absence from Scotland had eloped with an officer, the man of the