e seen that
ascension trick before, but how it is done I have no more idea than a
child. Those smoke scenes, too, are astonishing. Of course they could be
accounted for as thrown upon a column of white smoke by a magic lantern,
but there was certainly no magic lantern here. The juggler was standing
close to me, and the girl was sitting at his feet. I watched them both
closely, and certainly they had no apparatus about them by which such
views could be thrown on the smoke."

"You recognized the first scene, I suppose, Doctor?" Bathurst asked.

"Perfectly. It took me back twenty-five years. It was a cottage near
Sidmouth, and was correct in every minute detail. The figure was that of
the young lady I married four years afterwards. Many a time have I seen
her standing just like that, as I went along the road to meet her from
the little inn at which I was stopping; the very pattern of her dress,
which I need hardly say has never been in my mind all these years, was
recalled to me.

"Had I been thinking of the scene at the time I could have accounted for
it somehow, upon the theory that in some way or other the juggler was
conscious of my thought and reflected it upon the smoke--how, I don't at
all mean to say; but undoubtedly there exists, to some extent, the power
of thought reading. It is a mysterious subject, and one of which we know
absolutely nothing at present, but maybe in upwards of a hundred years
mankind will have discovered many secrets of nature in that direction.
But I certainly was not thinking of that scene when I spoke and said the
'past.' I had no doubt that he would show me something of the past,
but certainly no particular incident passed through my mind before that
picture appeared on the smoke."

"The other was almost as curious, Doctor," Captain Doolan said, "for
it was certainly you masquerading as a native. I believe the other was
Bathurst; it struck me so; and he seemed to be running off with some
native girl. What on earth could that all mean?"

"It is no use puzzling ourselves about it," the Doctor said. "It may or
may not come true. I have no inclination to go about dressed out as a
native at present, but there is no saying what I may come to. There
is quite enough for us to wonder at in the other things. The mango and
basket tricks I have seen a dozen times, and am no nearer now than I
was at first to understanding them. That ascension trick beats me
altogether, and there was something horr