cts of the whole affair. And her reading of them and
of the Lady of the Shroud, round whom they circle, may not be the same as
mine. Well, that will be all right too. Aunt Janet loves me--God knows
I have good reason to know that all through these years--and whatever
view she may take, her acts will be all I could wish. But I shall come
in for a good lot of scolding, I am sure. By the way, I ought to think
of that; if Aunt Janet scolds me, it is a pretty good proof that I ought
to be scolded. I wonder if I dare tell her all. No! It is too strange.
She is only a woman, after all: and if she knew I loved . . . I wish I
knew her name, and thought--as I might myself do, only that I resist
it--that she is not alive at all. Well, what she would either think or
do beats me. I suppose she would want to slipper me as she used to do
when I was a wee kiddie--in a different way, of course.

_May_ 3, 1907.

I really could not go on seriously last night. The idea of Aunt Janet
giving me a licking as in the dear old days made me laugh so much that
nothing in the world seemed serious then. Oh, Aunt Janet is all right
whatever comes. That I am sure of, so I needn't worry over it. A good
thing too; there will be plenty to worry about without that. I shall not
check her telling me of her visions, however; I may learn something from
them.

For the last four-and-twenty hours I have, whilst awake, been looking
over Aunt Janet's books, of which I brought a wheen down here. Gee
whizz! No wonder the old dear is superstitious, when she is filled up to
the back teeth with that sort of stuff! There may be some truth in some
of those yarns; those who wrote them may believe in them, or some of
them, at all events. But as to coherence or logic, or any sort of
reasonable or instructive deduction, they might as well have been written
by so many hens! These occult book-makers seem to gather only a lot of
bare, bald facts, which they put down in the most uninteresting way
possible. They go by quantity only. One story of the kind, well
examined and with logical comments, would be more convincing to a third
party than a whole hecatomb of them.

RUPERT'S JOURNAL--_Continued_.

_May_ 4, 1907.

There is evidently something up in the country. The mountaineers are
more uneasy than they have been as yet. There