you mean.'

The mystery of the young man, who could not have entered the house
without ringing, was unsolved. Next day a lady living exactly
opposite Miss H.'s house, asked that lady if she could give
hospitality to a young man who was coming to Edinburgh from the
country. Miss H. assented, and prepared a room, but the visitor,
she was informed, went to stay with a relation of his own. Two days
later Miss H. was looking out of her dining-room window after
luncheon.

'Why, there's my ghost!' she exclaimed, and her friends, running to
the window, allowed that he answered to the description. The
'ghost' went into the house of Miss H.'s friend on the other side of
the street, and Miss H., with natural curiosity, sallied out, and
asked who he was. He was the young man for whom she had prepared a
room. During his absence in the country, his 'co-walker' had
visited the house at which he intended to stay!

Coincidences of this kind, then, gave rise to the belief in this
branch of second sight.

Though fairies are the 'phantasmogenetic agencies' in second sight,
a man may acquire the art by magic. A hair rope which has bound a
corpse to a bier is wound about him, and then he looks backward
'through his legs' till he sees a funeral. The vision of a seer can
be communicated to any one who puts his left foot under the wizard's
right foot.

This is still practised in some parts of the Highlands, as we shall
see, but, near Inverness, the custom only survives in the memory of
some old people. {237} Mr. Kirk's wizards defended the lawfulness
of their clairvoyance by the example of Elisha seeing Gehazi at a
distance. {238} The second sight was hereditary in some families:
this is no longer thought to be the case. Kirk gives some examples
of clairvoyance, and prescience: he then quotes and criticises Lord
Tarbatt's letters to Robert Boyle. Second sight 'is a trouble to
most of them, and they would be rid of it at any rate, if they
could'. One of our own informants says that the modern seers are
anxious when they feel the vision beginning: they do not, however,
regard the power as unholy or disreputable. Another informant
mentions a belief that children born between midnight and one
o'clock will be second-sighted. People attempt to hasten or delay
the birth, so as to avoid the witching hour; clearly then they
regard the second sight as an unenviable accomplishment. 'It is
certane' says Kirk, 'he sie more fatall a