joyous
animal life, and the abrupt disappearance of the Unknown.

I was once practising bowls on the lawn of a very old house, the other
inhabitants of which were all occupied indoors. I had taken up a bowl,
and was in the act of throwing it, when, suddenly, on the empty space in
front of me I saw a shadow, a nodding, waving, impenetrable,
undecipherable shadow. I looked around, but there was nothing visible
that could in any way account for it. I threw down the bowl and turned
to go indoors. As I did so, something touched me lightly in the face. I
threw out my hand and touched a cold, clammy substance strangely
suggestive of the leafy branch of a tree. Yet nothing was to be seen. I
felt again, and my fingers wandered to a broader expanse of something
gnarled and uneven. I kept on exploring, and my grasp closed over
something painfully prickly. I drew my hand smartly back, and, as I did
so, distinctly heard the loud and angry rustling of leaves. Just then
one of my friends called out to me from a window. I veered round to
reply, and the shadow had vanished. I never saw it again, though I often
had the curious sensation that it was there. I did not mention my
experience to my friends, as they were pronounced disbelievers in the
superphysical, but tactful inquiry led to my gleaning the information
that on the identical spot, where I had felt the phenomena, had once
stood a horse-chestnut tree, which had been cut down owing to the strong
aversion the family had taken to it, partly on account of a strange
growth on the trunk, unpleasantly suggestive of cancer, and partly
because a tramp had hanged himself on one of the branches.

All sorts of extraordinary shadows have come to me in the Parks, the
Twopenny Tube, and along the Thames Embankment. At ten o'clock, on the
morning of 1st April 1899, I entered Hyde Park by one of the side gates
of the Marble Arch, and crossing to the island, sat down on an empty
bench. The sky was grey, the weather ominous, and occasional heavy drops
of rain made me rejoice in the possession of an umbrella. On such a day,
the park does not appear at its best. The Arch exhibited a dull, dirty,
yellowish-grey exterior; every seat was bespattered with mud; whilst, to
render the general aspect still more unprepossessing, the trees had not
yet donned their mantles of green, but stood dejectedly drooping their
leafless branches as if overcome with embarrassment at their nakedness.
On the benches aroun