ten
attends seances. This occult brain had attached itself to her, and,
accompanying her home, had deliberately wrecked her domestic happiness.
It would doubtless remain with her now _ad infinitum_. Indeed, it is
next to impossible to shake off these superphysical cerebrums. They
cling to one with such leech-like tenacity, and can rarely be made to
depart till they have accomplished their purposes.

Burial-grounds appear to have great attractions for this class of
spirit. A man, whom I once met at Boulogne, told me a remarkable story,
the veracity of which I have no reason to doubt.

"I have," he began, "undergone an experience which, though,
unfortunately, by no means unique, is one that is rarer nowadays than
formerly. I was once all but buried alive. It happened at a little
village, a most charming spot, near Maestel in the valley of the Rhone.
I had been stopping at the only inn the place possessed, and, cycling
out one morning, met with an accident--my machine skidded violently as I
was descending a steep hill, with the result that I was pitched head
first against a brick wall. The latter being considerably harder than my
skull, concussion followed. Some villagers picked me up insensible, I
was taken to the inn, and the nearest doctor--an uncertificated
wretch--was summoned. He knew little of trepanning; besides, I was a
foreigner, a German, and it did not matter. He bled me, it is true, and
performed other of the ordinary means of relief; but these producing no
apparent effect, he pronounced me dead, and preparations were at once
made for my burial. As strangers kept coming to the inn and the
accommodation was strictly limited, the landlord was considerably
incensed at having to waste a room on a corpse. Accordingly, he had me
screwed down in my coffin without delay, and placed in the cemetery
among the tombs, till the public gravedigger could conveniently spare a
few minutes to inter me. The shaking I received during my transit (for
the yokels were exceedingly rough and clumsy), together with the cold
night air which, luckily for me, found an easy means of access through
the innumerable chinks and cracks in the ill-fitting coffin-lid, acting
like a restorative tonic, I gradually revived, and the horror I felt in
realising my position is better, perhaps, imagined than described. When
consciousness first began to reassert itself, I simply fancied I was
awakening from a particularly deep sleep. I then struggled har