The Devil he sang, the Devil he played
High and fast and free.
And this was ever the song he made,
As it was told to me.
Oh, I am the king of the air and the ground,
And lord of the seasons' roll,
And I will give you a hundred pound,
If you will give me your soul!

   The Ballad of Grey Weather

THE cattle market of Inverforth is, as all men know north of the Tweed,
the greatest market of the kind in the land. For days in the late Autumn
there is the lowing of oxen and the bleating of sheep among its high
wooden pens, and in the rickety sale-rings the loud clamour of
auctioneers and the talk of farmers. In the open yard where are the
drovers and the butchers, a race always ungodly and law-despising, there
is such a Babel of cries and curses as might wake the Seven Sleepers.
From twenty different adjacent eating-houses comes the clatter of
knives, where the country folk eat their dinner of beef and potatoes,
with beer for sauce, and the collies grovel on the ground for stray
morsels. Hither come a hundred types of men from the Highland cateran
with scarce a word of English, and the shentleman-farmer of Inverness
and Ross, to lowland graziers and city tradesmen, not to speak of
blackguards of many nationalities and more professions.

It was there I first met Duncan Stewart of Clachamharstan, in the Moor
of Rannoch, and there I heard this story. He was an old man when I knew
him, grizzled and wind-beaten; a prosperous man, too, with many herds
like Jacob and much pasture. He had come down from the North with
kyloes, and as he waited on the Englishmen with whom he had trysted, he
sat with me through the long day and beguiled the time with many
stories. He had been a drover in his youth, and had travelled on foot
the length and breadth of Scotland; and his memory went back hale and
vigorous to times which are now all but historical. This tale I heard
among many others as we sat on a pen amid the smell of beasts and the
jabber of Gaelic:


'When I was just turned of twenty-five I was a wild young lad as ever
was heard of. I had taken to the droving for the love of a wild life,
and a wild life I led. My father's heart would be broken long syne with
my doings, and well for my mother that she was in her grave since I was
six years old. I paid no heed to the ministrations of godly Mr.
Macdougall of the Isles, who bade me turn from the error of my ways, but
went on my own evil course, making siller, for I was a brawl lad at the
work and a trusted, and knowing the inside of every public from the pier
of Cromarty to the streets of York. I was a wild drinker, caring in my
cups for neither God nor man, a great hand with the cards, and fond of
the lasses past all telling. It makes me shameful to this day to think
on my evil life when I was twenty-five.

'Well, it chanced that in the back of the month of September I found
myself in the city of Edinburgh with a flock of fifty sheep which I had
bought as a venture from a drunken bonnet-laird and was thinking of
selling somewhere wast the country. They were braw beasts, Leicester
every one of them, well-fed and dirt-cheap at the price I gave. So it
was with a light heart that I drove them out of the town by the
Merchiston Road along by the face of the Pentlands. Two or three friends
came with me, all like myself for folly, but maybe a little bit poorer.
Indeed, I cared little for them, and they valued me only for the whisky
which I gave them to drink my health in at the parting. They left me on
the near side of Colinton, and I went on my way alone.

'Now, if you'll be remembering the road, you will mind that at the place
called Kirk Newton, just afore the road begins to twine over the Big
Muir and almost at the head of the Water o' Leith, there is a verra fine
public. Indeed, it would be no lee to call it the best public between
Embro' and Glesca. The good wife, Lucky Craik by name, was an old friend
of mine, for many a good gill of her prandy have I bought; so what would
I be doing but just turning aside for refreshment? She met me at the
door, verra pleased-like to see me, and soon I had my legs aneath her
table and a basin of toddy on the board before me. And whom did I find
in the same place but my old comrade Toshie Maclean from the backside of
Glen-Lyon. Toshie and I were acquaintances so old that it did not
behoove us to be parting quick. Forbye the day was chill without; and
within the fire was grand and the crack of the best.

'Then Toshie and I got on quarrelling about the price of Lachlan
Farawa's beasts that he sold at Falkirk; and, the drink having aye a
bad effect on my temper, I was for giving him the lie and coming off in
a great rage. It was about six o'clock in the evening and an hour to
nightfall, so Mistress Craik comes in to try and keep me. 'Losh,
Duncan,' says she, 'yell never try and win ower the muir the nicht. It's
mae than ten mile to Carnwath, and there's nocht atween it and this but
whaups and heathery braes.' But when I am roused I will be more
obstinate than ten mules, so I would be going, though I knew not under
Heaven where I was going till. I was too full of good liquor and good
meat to be much worth at thinking, so I got my sheep on the road an a
big bottle in my pouch and set off into the heather. I knew not what my
purpose was, whether I thought to reach the shieling of Carnwath, or
whether I expected some house of entertainment to spring up by the
wayside. But my fool's mind was set on my purpose of getting some miles
further in my journey ere the coming of darkness.

'For some time I jogged happily on, with my sheep running well before me
and my dogs trotting at my heels. We left the trees behind and struck
out on the proad grassy path which bands the moor like the waist-strap
of a sword. It was most dreary and lonesome with never a house in view,
only bogs and grey hillsides and ill-looking waters. It was stony, too,
and this more than aught else caused my Dutch courage to fail me, for I
soon fell wearied, since much whisky is bad travelling fare, and began
to curse my folly. Had my pride no kept me back, I would have returned
to Lucky Craik's; but I was like the devil, for stiff-neckedness and
thought of nothing but to push on.

'I own that I was verra well tired and quite spiritless when I first saw
the House. I had scarce been an hour on the way, and the light was not
quite gone; but still it was geyan dark, and the place sprang somewhat
suddenly on my sight. For, looking a little to the left, I saw over a
little strip of grass a big square dwelling with many outhouses, half
farm and half pleasure-house. This, I thought, is the verra place I have
been seeking and made sure of finding; so whistling a gay tune, I drove
my flock toward it.

'When I came to the gate of the court, I saw better of what sort was the
building I had arrived at. There was a square yard with monstrous high
walls, at the left of which was the main block of the house, and on the
right what I took to be the byres and stables. The place looked ancient,
and the stone in many places was crumbling away; but the style was of
yesterday and in no way differing from that of a hundred steadings in
the land. There were some kind of arms above the gateway, and a bit of
an iron stanchion; and when I had my sheep inside of it, I saw that the
court was all grown up with green grass. And what seemed queer in that
dusky half-light was the want of sound.

'There was no neichering of horses, nor routing of kye, nor clack of
hens, but all as still as the top of Ben Cruachan. It was warm and
pleasant too, though the night was chill without.

'I had no sooner entered the place than a row of sheep-pens caught my
eye, fixed against the wall in front. This I thought mighty convenient,
so I made all haste to put my beasts into them; and finding that there
was a good supply of hay within, I leff them easy in my mind, and turned
about to look for the door of the house.

'To my wonder, when I found it, it was open wide to the wall; so, being
confident with much whisky, I never took thought to knock, but walked
boldly in. There's some careless folk here, thinks Ito myself, and I
much misdoubt if the man knows aught about farming. He'll maybe just be
a town's body taking the air on the muirs.

'The place I entered upon was a hall, not like a muirland farmhouse, but
more fine than I had ever seen. It was laid with a verra fine carpet,
all red and blue and gay colours, and in the corner in a fireplace a
great fire crackled. There were chairs, too, and a walth of old rusty
arms on the walls, and all manner of whigmaleeries that folk think
ornamental. But nobody was there, so I made for the staircase which was
at the further side, and went up it stoutly. I made scarce any noise so
thickly was it carpeted, and I will own it kind of terrified me to be
walking in such a place. But when a man has drunk well he is troubled
not overmuckle with modesty or fear, so I e'en stepped out and soon came
to a landing where was a door.

'Now, thinks I, at last I have won to the habitable parts of the house;
so laying my finger on the sneck I lifted it and entered. And there
before me was the finest room in all the world; indeed I abate not a jot
of the phrase, for I cannot think of anything finer. It was hung with
braw pictures and lined with big bookcases of oak well-filled with books
in fine bindings. The furnishing seemed carved by a skilled hand, and
the cushions and curtains were soft velvet. But the best thing was the
table, which was covered with a clean white cloth and set with all kind
of good meat and drink. The dishes were of silver and as bright as Loch
Awe water in an April sun. Eh, but it was a braw braw sight for a
drover! And there at the far end, with a great pottle of wine before
him, sat the master.

'He rose as I entered, and I saw him to be dressed in the pink of town
fashion, a man of maybe fifty years, but hale and well-looking, with a
peaked beard and trimmed moustache and thick eyebrows. His eyes were
slanted a thought, which is a thing I hate in any man, but his whole
appearance was pleasing.

'"Mr. Stewart?" says he courteously, looking at me. "Is it Mr. Duncan
Stewart that I will be indebted to for the honour of this visit?"

'I stared at him blankly, for how did he ken my name?

'"That is my name," I said, "but who the tevil tell't you about it?"

'"Oh, my name is Stewart myself," says he, "and all Stewarts should be
well acquaint."

'"True," said I, "though I don't mind your face before. But now I am
here, I think you have a most gallant place, Mr. Stewart."

'"Well enough. But how have you come to't? We've few visitors."

'So I told him where I had come from, and where I was going, and why I
was forwandered at this time of night among the muirs. He listened
keenly, and when I had finished, he says verra friendly-like, "Then
you'll bide all night and take supper with me. It would never be doing
to let one of the clan go away without breaking bread. Sit ye down, Mr.
Duncan."

'I sat down gladly enough, though I own that at first I did not
half-like the whole business. There was something unchristian about the
place, and for certain it was not seemly that the man's name should be
the same as my own, and that he should be so well posted in my doings.
But he seemed so well-disposed that my misgivings soon vanished.

'So I seated myself at the table opposite my entertainer. There was a
place laid ready for me, and beside the knife and fork a long
horn-handled spoon. I had never seen a spoon so long and queer, and I
asked the man what it meant. "Oh," says he, "the broth in this house is
very often hot, so we need a long spoon to sup it. It is a common enough
thing, is it not?"

'I could answer nothing to this, though it did not seem to me sense, and
I had an inkling of something I had heard about long spoons which I
thought was not good; but my wits were not clear, as I have told you
already. A serving man brought me a great bowl of soup and set it before
me. I had hardly plunged spoon intil it, when Mr. Stewart cries out from
the other end: "Now, Mr. Duncan, I call you to witness that you sit down
to supper of your own accord. I've an ill name in these parts for
compelling folk to take meat with me when they dinna want it. But you'll
bear me witness that you're willing."

'"Yes, by God, I am that," I said, for the savoury smell of the broth was
rising to my nostrils. The other smiled at this as if well-pleased.

'I have tasted many soups, but I swear there never was one like that. It
was as if all the good things in the world were mixed thegether--whisky
and kale and shortbread and cocky-leeky and honey and salmon. The taste
of it was enough to make a body's heart loup with fair gratitude. The
smell of it was like the spicy winds of Arabia, that you read about in
the Bible, and when you had taken a spoonful you felt as happy as if you
had sellt a hundred yowes at twice their reasonable worth. Oh, it was
grand soup!

'"What Stewarts did you say you comed from," I asked my entertainer.

'"Oh," he says, "I'm connected with them all, Athole Stewarts, Appin
Stewarts, Rannoch Stewarts; and a' I've a heap o' land thereaways."

'"Whereabouts?" says I, wondering. "Is't at the Blair o' Athole, or along
by Tummel side, or wast the Loch o' Rannoch, or on the Muir, or in
Mamore?"

'"In all the places you name," says he.

'"Got damn," says I, "then what for do you not bide there instead of in
these stinking lawlands?"

'At this he laughed softly to himself. "Why, for maybe the same reason
as yoursel, Mr. Duncan. You know the proverb, 'A' Stewarts are sib to
the Deil."'

'I laughed loudly; "Oh, you've been a wild one, too, have you? Then
you're not worse than mysel. I ken the inside of every public in the
Cowgate and Cannongate, and there's no another drover on the road my
match at fechting and drinking and dicing." And I started on a long
shameless catalogue of my misdeeds. Mr. Stewart meantime listened with a
satisfied smirk on his face.

'"Yes, I've heard tell of you, Mr. Duncan," he says. "But here's
something more, and you'll doubtless be hungry."

'And now there was set on the table a round of beef garnished with
pot-herbs, all most delicately fine to the taste. From a great cupboard
were brought many bottles of wine, and in a massive silver bowl at the
table's head were put whisky and lemons and sugar. I do not know well
what I drank, but whatever it might be it was the best ever brewed. It
made you scarce feel the earth round about you, and you were so happy
you could scarce keep from singing. I wad give much siller to this day
for the receipt.

'Now, the wine made me talk, and I began to boast of my own great
qualities, the things I had done and the things I was going to do. I was
a drover just now, but it was not long that I would be being a drover. I
had bought a flock of my own, and would sell it for a hundred pounds, no
less; with that I would buy a bigger one till I had made money enough to
stock a farm; and then I would leave the road and spend my days in
peace, seeing to my land and living in good company. Was not my father,
I cried, own cousin, thrice removed, to the Macleans o' Duart, and my
mother's uncle's wife a Rory of Balnacroy? And I am a scholar too, said
I, for I was a matter of two years at Embro' College, and might have
been roaring in the pulpit, if I hadna liked the drink and the lassies
too well.

'"See," said I, "I will prove it to you;" and I rose from the table and
went to one of the bookcases. There were all manner of books, Latin and
Greek, poets and philosophers, but in the main, divinity. For there I
saw Richard Baxter's 'Call to the Unconverted,' and Thomas Boston of
Ettrick's 'Fourfold State,' not to speak of the Sermons of half a
hundred auld ministers, and the 'Hind let Loose,' and many books of the
covenanting folk.

'"Faith," I says, "you've a fine collection, Mr. What's-your-name," for
the wine had made me free in my talk. "There is many a minister and
professor in the Kirk, I'll warrant, who has a less godly library. I
begin to suspect you of piety, sir."

'"Does it not behoove us," he answered in an unctuous voice, "to mind the
words of Holy Writ that evil communications corrupt good manners, and
have an eye to our company? These are all the company I have, except
when some stranger such as you honours me--with a visit."

'I had meantime been opening a book of plays, I think by the famous
William Shakespeare, and I here proke into a loud laugh. "Ha, ha, Mr.
Stewart," I says, "here's a sentence I've lighted on which is hard on
you. Listen! 'The Devil can quote Scripture to advantage.'"

'The other laughed long. "He who wrote that was a shrewd man," he said,
"but I'll warrant if you'll open another volume, you'll find some quip
on yourself."

'I did as I was bidden, and picked up a white-backed book, and opening
it at random, read: "There be many who spend their days in evil and
wine-bibbing, in lusting and cheating, who think to mend while yet there
is time; but the opportunity is to them for ever awanting, and they go
down open-mouthed to the great fire."

'"Psa," I cried, "some wretched preaching book, I will have none of them.
Good wine will be better than bad theology." So I sat down once more at
the table.

'"You're a clever man, Mr. Duncan," he says, "and a well-read one. I
commend your spirit in breaking away from the bands of the kirk and the
college, though your father was so thrawn against you."

'"Enough of that," I said, "though 4 don't know who telled you;" I was
angry to hear my father spoken of, as though the grieving him was a
thing to be proud of.

'"Oh, as you please," he says; "I was just going to say that I commended
your spirit in sticking the knife into the man ih the Pleasaunce, the
time you had to hide for a month about the backs o' Leith."

'"How do you ken that," I asked hotly, "you've heard more about me than
ought to be repeated, let me tell you."

'"Don't be angry," he said sweetly; "I like you well for these things,
and you mind the lassie in Athole that was so fond of you. You treated
her well, did you not?"

'I made no answer, being too much surprised at his knowledge of things
which I thought none knew but myself.

'"Oh yes, Mr. Duncan. I could tell you what you were doing to-day, how
you cheated Jock Gallowa out of six pounds, and sold a horse to the
fanner of Haypath that was scarce fit to carry him home. And I know what
you are meaning to do the morn at Glesca, and I wish you well of it."

'"I think you must be the Devil," I said blankly.

'"The same, at your service," said he, still smiling.

'I looked at him in terror, and even as I looked I kenned by something
in his eyes and the twitch of his lips that he was speaking the truth.
"And what place is this, you..." I stammered.

'"Call me Mr. S.," he says gently, "and enjoy your stay while you are
here and don't concern yourself about the lawing."

'"The lawing!" I cried in astonishment, "and is this a house of public
entertainment?"

'"To be sure, else how is a poor man to live?"

'"Name it," said I, "and I will pay and be gone."

'"Well," said he, "I make it a habit to give a man his choice. In your
case it will be your wealth or your chances hereafter, in plain English
your flock or your--"

'"My immortal soul," I gasped.

'"Your soul," said Mr. S., bowing, "though I think you call it by too
flattering an adjective."

'"You damned thief," I roared, "you would entice a man into your accursed
house and then strip him bare."

'"Hold hard," said he, "don't let us spoil our good fellowship by
incivilities. And, mind you, I took you to witness to begin with that
you sat down of your own accord."

'"So you did," said I, and could say no more.

'"Come, come," he says, "don't take it so bad. You may keep all your gear
and yet part from here in safety. You've but to sign your name, which is
no hard task to a college-bred man, and go on living as you live just
now to the end. And let me tell you, Mr. Duncan Stewart, that you should
take it as a great obligement that I am willing to take your bit soul
instead of fifty sheep. There's no many would value it so high."

'"Maybe no, maybe no," I said sadly, "but it's all I have. D'ye no see
that if I gave it up, there would be no chance left of mending? And I'm
sure I do not want your company to all eternity."

'"Faith, that's uncivil," he says; "I was just about to say that we had
had a very pleasant evening."

'I sat back in my chair very down-hearted. I must leave this place as
poor as a kirk-mouse, and begin again with little but the clothes on my
back. I was strongly tempted to sign the bit paper thing and have done
with it all, but somehow I could not bring myself to do it. So at last I
says to him: "Well, I've made up my mind. I'll give you my sheep, sorry
though I be to lose them, and I hope I may never come near this place
again as long as I live."

'"On the contrary," he said, "I hope often to have the pleasure of your
company. And seeing that you've paid well for your lodging, I hope
you'll make the best of it. Don't be sparing on the drink."

'I looked hard at him for a second. "You've an ill name, and an ill
trade, but you're no a bad sort yoursel, and, do you ken, I like you."

'"I'm much obliged to you for the character," says he, "and I'll take
your hand on't."

'So I filled up my glass and we set to, and such an evening I never mind
of. We never got fou, but just in a fine good temper and very
entertaining. The stories we telled and the jokes we cracked are still a
kind of memory with me, though I could not come over one of them. And
then, when I got sleepy, I was shown to the brawest bedroom, all hung
with pictures and looking-glasses, and with bed-clothes of the finest
linen and a coverlet of silk. I bade Mr. S. good-night, and my head was
scarce on the pillow ere I was sound asleep.

'When I awoke the sun was just newly risen, and the frost of a September
morning was on my clothes. I was lying among green braes with nothing
near me but crying whaups and heathery hills, and my two dogs running
round about and howling as they were mad.'

I am no student of aetiology, but lying in my hot bath of a wintry morning and watching the steam precipitate on the window-panes I am struck by the fact that the resultant rivulets seldom if ever follow the same courses today as they did yesterday. It is remarkable how often a down-speeding globule of water will unforseeably take an abrupt turn to right or left, as does the electric fluid in a discharge of lightning. There must, of course, be cause for each twist and turn, though unperceivable, and similarly there must be cause for every twist and turn of human experience. Such causes can seldom be sensed with certainty even by the human agent, or patient, whose behaviour is determined by them: their recognition by an outside observer is still more problematical. Nevertheless, I believe myself to have stumbled on connected links in a chain of events that culminated in the sudden and violent death of my bachelor cousin, Herbert Sidden, at the age of forty-three.

The coroner’s verdict was death by misadventure. Herbert had been knocked down and killed where the footpath from Haddenham Green used to cross the railway on the level. The present footbridge was erected after (possibly because of) the accident. On rounding the curve by the tile factory the driver of a down excursion train saw him stooping right in the middle of the track. Though he blew his whistle, Herbert never moved and a few seconds later a broken bleeding body lay in the six-foot way. Nobody else witnessed the fatality and the only object found by the police on the sleepers of the crossing was, irrelevantly enough it seemed, a jellyfish. This, it was ascertained, had dropped from the toy bucket of a small boy on his way home from paddling. Possibly, the coroner remarked, the deceased had slipped on it; but there was no evidence to support the conjecture.

There was certainly no ground for suspicion of suicide. My cousin had inherited a comfortable income, and his enjoyment of it as a leisured litterateur was without ill health or other detraction. Of his numerous acquaintances many would have welcomed a greater intimacy, but he inclined towards seclusion rather than society. In myself he seemed to take a mild cousinly interest suggestive more of curiosity than of liking. It was, therefore, a surprise to find that he had left me five thousand pounds, free of duty, together with the whole of his not inconsiderable library. During my inspection of its contents I came across the two manuscript volumes and a scrapbook which, if I am not mistaken, afford clues to the problem of the testator’s end.

The older manuscript book, much smudged and dog-eared, bears in an unformed hand the endorsement ‚prayrs and pomes‘; the second is headed in firm well-written capital letters ‚JUVENILIA‘. Between their respective contents there is great difference both in matter and style. Verses in the earlier have an authentic ring of childhood and the sentiments which they express are neither affected nor precocious. They are devoid of punctuation, as the following five examples will show:

Example (1)
PRAYR
plese help me god
to be quite good
and never rude
or cross or odd
so when i die
or the werld ends
we may be freinds
up in the sky *

* Note. At first reading I thought the order of the rhyming strange for a small boy, but I afterwards remembered that he must have sat through many sermons in the family pew at Haddenham confronted by a mural tablet whose inscription ended with:

There lyeth here
But dust and bone:
The soul is flown
To Heaven’s sphere.

Example (2)
DETH
I felt sad and Mary cried
when the poor canarry died
we berried him in the chiken run
and hated god for what bed done

Example (3)
MUSIC PRACTIS
in saxling church on Saturday
we herd aunt madge the organ play
she did the hyms a trifle sadly
the sarms and other peices badly

Example (4)
RAILWAY JURNEY
the railway carrage keeps quite still
but things outside it fly
mile on mile pole after pole
the telygraff wires streak by
up and down, down and up
scratching along the sky
a bush comes sliding down the hedge
the fence dives into a pond
green woods like catapillers crorl
eating the hills beyond

Example (5)
FUNAREL
yesterday we found a jellifsh
nanny said it were a smelly fish
so we berried it in sand
the funarel was grand
nanny says she does not know
where good jellifishes go
but she thort the chances are
that jellifsh is now a star

In contrast to the foregoing, the verses in ‚Juvenilia‘ are patently not the work of a child, even if a moiety of them may perhaps have been written in revision of earlier efforts or have reflected memories of childhood. They leave the impression that their author must have taken pains to trick them out for grown-up recital or even perhaps for publication. Two specimens of such fake-stuff will suffice.

MR BROWN UNDER EXAMINATION
As we went walking down the town
Whom should we meet but Mr Brown?
Auntie says that she has never
Met a person half as clever,
So we thought that he’d know what
She and Uncle Tom do not:
Why God allows good men to die
And how do babies come and why.
But Mr Brown behaved so queerly;
He made a face and said ‚O really!‘

TO A JELLYFISH
Out of proper respect for you, Sir,
I shall call you Mr Medusa
(A name that I took
From our animal book);
Gentlemen in Debrett or Kelly
Don’t have names like Fish, A. Jelly—

The sophistication of this last piece is in strong contrast to the naïveté of ‚funarel‘. I have selected these two verses for special citation and reference because no less than four of the ‚pomes‘ and nine of the ‚Juvenilia‘ contain allusions to jellyfish or medusae. They appear, indeed, to have become an obsession. In the Juvenilia, for instance, there is a painful parody of Shelley’s ‚Skylark‘ beginning, ‚Hail to thee, blithe jelly, Fish thou never wert‘; and, even worse, a travesty of an Easter hymn in which the terminal Hallelujahs are replaced by ‚Jellyhoohahs‘.

Pastings in the scrap-book show a similarly large proportion of newspaper and magazine cuttings on the same subject and even excerpts from books. For example, there is an account taken from the Southshire Daily News of the 17th September, 1902, of an experimental tank for sea anemones and jellyfish in the Bournepool aquarium, and a letter from a correspondent to the Borehaven Gazette recording measurements of a giant jellyfish found on the beach below Corley Head. Its diameter was exactly the length of the correspondent’s umbrella stick. In another cutting a ‚Lover of Nature‘ reported having seen a weasel emerge from a tamarisk hedge, dash down the muddy bank of a creek and return with a jellyfish in its mouth. It is indeed amazing that a man of my cousin’s intelligence and education should have accumulated such a litter of nonsense and misinformation. His childhood’s prayer against becoming ‚odd‘ had clearly been unanswered.

Oddities of taste and interest seldom conduce to mental or psychological well-being. In Herbert’s case the jellyfish motif appears to have become queerly associated with his tendency to dabble in clairvoyance and mysticism, as the following typewritten entry in the scrap-book will illustrate. It is headed in his handwriting: ‚Copied from Captain Philip Smythe’s Geographical and Historical Relation of a Hitherto Undescribed Island in the South Seas, London, MDCCIV.‘

The natives on this coast are adept soothsayers and tellers of fortune, to which end they employ divers ingenious devices; whereof I deem this peculiar to them that whenever there be high winds and sea they will diligently search the beaches for jellyfishes of which (there being in that region no diurnal rise nor fall of tides) none will be stranded in fair weathers. The same being found they will in no wise move or touch lest it lose virtue thereby but will bring to it a seer or magus for his divination. If the number of coloured rings within the transparency be fewer or greater than four, which is the common order, it is held of excellent augury for a revelation. The magus will regard the fish without nictitation until the coloured rings appear to him to turn in a revolution contrary to that of the sun, when he will cry in the native tongue ‚camphui‘, that is, ‚I descend!‘ Any that be with him shall then keep silence until he say ‚timphui‘, that is, ‚I ascend!‘; whereafter he will recite to them the revelation, if one there be. In the mean space he will have fallen into a dream or trance, the manner of which was thus explained to me. The apparent rotation of the rings will by slow degrees become a gyration of the whole substance, waxing faster and yet more fast, until the magus is as a man gazing into a vortex wherein he soon feels sucked down into utter darkness. If a prophecy be vouchsafed he will now hear it as if chanted from afar; but if there be no prophecy he will hear but a hissing and seething of waters whereat he shall not tempt the oracle beyond its sufferance but cry forthwith ‚timphui‘ and declare that there is no revelation. If any should tempt the oracle unduly or misstate the message given he will haply suffer the fate that befell the arch-magus Rangitapha as described on page 57 of this Relation.

Beneath this excerpt my cousin had written a note as follows: ‚N.B. I have not troubled to copy the account of Rangitapha’s death as it was clearly brought about by quite ordinary misadventure.‘

My last selection from the scrap-book will be of a final entry in my cousin’s handwriting, initialed by him over a date some two months prior to his end. It runs thus:

I fancy that my experiments in divination by medusae would strike most people as folly and waste of time. I find them, however, of absorbing interest and am deeply grateful to old Willerton for lending me Smythe’s South Seas Relation. I suppose the process to be akin to crystal-gazing but for me the results have so far been more encouraging. I have twice now heard the hissing of waters in the vortex and yesterday afternoon a medusa, dropped by some child on the old barge wharf, yielded an even more promising reward for my mental and ocular concentration. This probably indicates that I now achieve a more complete and effective abstraction than when I first started my experiments. Be that as it may, I yesterday distinctly and unmistakably heard, above the hiss and gurgle of waters, the screech of a locomotive whistle and roar of a train. Unfortunately, the hissing and gurgling caused me to call ‚timphui‘ before there was any further development and I must now possess my soul in patience until another marooned medusa turns up to tell me what the engine whistle and roar of a train can have portended. I shall not allow myself to be cheated of a prophecy again by ’noises off‘.

Since reading the above I have had little doubt as to the causation of my cousin’s death. I am thankful to believe that it must have been instantaneous and painless. The shadow cast before it by a coming event is mercifully not always recognisable.