ter-effect, Mr O'Donnell?" the Baroness
inquired anxiously.

"I fear a serious one," I replied evasively. "In the case of the doctor
you mentioned, who committed murder, an evil ego had doubtless been
expelled, and, receiving a rebuff, had reunited, for after a reunion the
evil personality usually receives a new impetus and grows with amazing
rapidity. Have you heard from Mr Vercoe lately?"

The Baroness shook her head. "Not for several months."

"You will let me know when you do?"

She nodded.

A week later she wrote to me from Rome.

"Isn't it terrible?" she began, "Mr Vercoe committed suicide on
Wednesday--the Birmingham papers--he was a Birmingham man--are full of
it!"

_The Barrowvian_

The description of an adventure Mr Trobas, a friend of mine, had with a
barrowvian in Brittany (and which I omitted to relate when referring to
barrowvians), I now append as nearly as possible in his own words:--

"Night! A sky partially concealed from view by dark, fantastically
shaped clouds, that, crawling along with a slow, stealthy motion,
periodically obscure the moon. The crest of a hill covered with
short-clipped grass, much worn away in places, and in the centre a
Druidical circle broken and incomplete; a few of the stones are erect,
the rest either lie at full length on the sward, close to the mystic
ring, or at some considerable distance from it. Here and there are
distinct evidences of recent digging, and at the base of one of the
horizontal stones is an excavation of no little depth.

"A sudden, but only temporary clearance of the sky reveals the
surrounding landscape; the rugged mountain side, flecked with gleaming
granite boulders and bordered with sturdy hedges (a mixture of mud and
bracken), and beyond them the meadows, traversed by sinuous streams
whose scintillating surfaces sparkle like diamonds in the silvery
moonlight. At rare intervals the scene is variegated, and nature
interrupted, by a mill or a cottage,--toy-like when viewed from such an
altitude,--and then the sweep of meadowland continues, undulating gently
till it finds repose at the foot of some distant ridge of cone-shaped
mountains. Over everything there is a hush, awe-inspiring in its
intensity. Not the cry of a bird, not the howl of a dog, not the rustle
of a leaf; there is nothing, nothing but the silence of the most
profound sleep. In these remote rural districts man retires to rest
early, the physical world accompanying him; and a