The visit did good, however, for I got up and went out with her, and I can only say that the impression my manner and words made upon her was so deep that, the moment she arrived home, she sat down and wrote to a lady in the West of England - one who knew us all and who heard by every mail from her husband, who was in the same place as our friend. My sister told her exactly what I had said, and begged that she would at once send her particulars, since I had not done so. By return came the reply: -

" ' I cannot, dear Lady B., in the least understand your letter, nor what your sister can possibly mean. The last foreign mail only came in this morning' (after the date, of course, of my dream), 'and so far from being "dead" my husband tells me Mrs. Reed is much better; therefore, where Mrs. L. (myself) can have obtained her news is beyond my comprehension, for it is quite impossible that she can have had later news than mine, in fact, not so late, since my foreign letter arrived after your visit to her.' [This is not a copy but a reminiscence of the letter].

"And so the matter rested, but within a month from the date of my dream came the news of Mrs. Reed's death, on September 21st.

"I have but little now to add. The bereaved husband returned to England and called upon me. He gave me some details of the last days, and on my asking whether he remembered her last words, he turned to me with quite a look of surprise and said, 'Why, Mrs. Lightfoot, I believe your name was the last she mentioned.' Further, it was many months afterwards before my sister again broached the subject, but at last one day she said, ' I do wish you would tell me how you knew of Mrs. Reed's death.' Of course I then told her, and, I may add, that so deep was the impression produced upon her that even in her last illness, which occurred 7 or 8 years afterwards, she spoke of it. For myself I never really recovered the shock for a long time, and even now the impression is as vivid as though it only happened yesterday.

1Though the narrator twice uses this word, she certainly did not regard her experience as a dream.

"Frances W. Lightfoot".

Both the Calcutta Englishman and the Pioneer Mail (Allahabad) give September 20th, 1874, as the date of Mrs. Reed's death. Mrs. Lightfoot has unfortunately not kept her note of the day and hour. As she has now no independent recollection of the date of her experience, but only remembers the fact of the coincidence, and as it is practically certain that she heard the correct date of the death, the 20th, which has since become converted in her memory to the 21st, it seems tolerably safe to assume that her experience fell on the night of the 20th, that is, on the early morning of the 21st - not on the night of the 21st, as stated in the account.

In answer to the question whether this was the only occasion on which she has had a sensory hallucination of this kind, Mrs. Lightfoot answered " Yes." She adds that her sister, Lady B., "mentioned the matter at once to several friends and relatives." The sister has since died.

[In conversation, Mrs. Lightfoot confirmed again the fact of having had no sort of visual hallucination on any other occasion. She once, and once only, has had another remarkable auditory experience, when the sudden hearing of her Christian name saved her from a terrible fall in the dark. The origin of the sound was carefully inquired into and could not be ascertained.

As a proof of the absolute conviction produced in her that her friend was dead, she told me that she had prepared a birthday present to send her, and the box was actually soldered up, and had been going by the next mail; but she found it impossible to send it.

She had been under the impression that the time of death exactly coincided with her vision; but she had reckoned difference of longitude the wrong way. Mrs. Reed's husband informed her, on her inquiry, that the death took place at 11, that is 11 p.m. (as she thinks of September 21st, but no doubt of September 20th); and the vision was probably, therefore, 8 or 9 hours after it.

My impression of Mrs. Lightfoot entirely corresponds with her own description of herself - that she is a practical person, and without any sort of predisposition to frights or visions. The present one gave her a most severe shock, the effects of which lasted for some time].

In this chapter, various points of interest or difficulty have been passed over with very inadequate comment. It seemed better, however, not to forestall the more complete discussion of the relation of telepathy to sensory impressions, which will shortly follow.