I thought my eyes opened, and that the top of the cabin had become transparent, and I could see two dark figures floating in the air about the funnel. They appeared to be in earnest converse, pointing towards the mouth of the river and then at the ropes by which the boat was moored; at last they turned to each other, and after some gestures they seemed to have resolved upon a plan of action, and each floated in the air, one to the stem and the other to the stern, holding out a forefinger, and at the same moment each forefinger touched a rope and instantly burned it like a red - hot iron. The boat thus freed at once drifted with the rapid ebb, first passed the quay under the suspension bridge, then under the iron bridge, then across the broad waters of Braydon towards Yarmouth bridge, then down between the long lines of shipping there. All this time two figures were floating in the air above the boat, and both giving forth musical sounds. I thought I tried to break the spell upon me and wake my companion, for I knew that if we drifted out to sea we should certainly be swamped crossing the bar, but I lay there helpless. My eyes apparently saw every familiar object along the two and a half miles to the sea.

At last we passed Southtown, then the village of Gor - leston, and we came to the sharp last turn of the river where the swift waters were hurrying and tumbling over the bar to the broad sea beyond; and in those waters we were soon whirling, when the musical sounds, which had never ceased, were exchanged by the two dark figures for hideous screams of triumph as the boat rapidly began to sink. At last the waters appeared to reach my mouth, and I was drowning, choking. With a wild effort I bounded from the couch, burst the doors outwards, shivering them to pieces, and found myself (in my night-clothes) awake outside the ruined doors on a calm, bright moonlight night, and instinctively turned to the head rope; to my horror, it had just parted. Turning for the boathook I saw beside me my friend C, who had been aroused by the crash, and he shouted that he saw the stern rope go at the same time. We both held on despairingly to the boathook, bruising our unprotected shins, but our cries woke up the wherryman, who came to our assistance, supplying fresh ropes, and we were made snug for the rest of the night.

My friend upbraided me for the wreck of his doors, and I at once told him the whole of the above dream, by which I was then very much excited.

Next day I could calmly reflect that had we remained asleep when the ropes parted the tragedy I dreamed of must inevitably have taken place in all its literal detail.

"William E. Brighten."

" Argyll House, "Southend, Essex, 1884.

"Witness, Mr. J. W. Clabburn, Guild House, Thorpe, Norwich states:-

"I was with Mr. Brighten on the occasion referred to, and my knowledge of the matter commenced with being awakened by the crash of the doors, upon which I went out and saw Mr. Brighten with the boathook, in an excited state, trying to hold the bows of the boat. I saw the stern rope part, the bow rope had already gone. The whole scene passed in a moment Mr. Brighten at once related his dream to me as above.

"James W. Clabburn."

"Argyll House, " Southend, 6th December, 1884.

"Each experience is unique, and I have never had any other dream or voice warning of impending danger.

"Neither am I a dreamer at all beyond the ordinary run of mankind. I can have no possible objection to have my name appended to the statements.

"William E. Brighten."

Few of our narratives are more difficult than these to range under any one of our definite classes. In some way Mr. Brighten obtained a connaissance superi - eure, as M. Richet terms it; in some way he became aware of impending dangers which no ordinary faculty could have revealed. Are we to call it clairvoyance or premonition or communication from any embodied or unembodied mind?

I will now quote one or two instances out of the many known and investigated, where the dream has been the means of discovering a lost article. The first is as follows:-

From Mr. A. Brockelbank, 20 Marsden Road East Dulwich, S.E.1

14th July, 1884.

"Some years ago I lost a pocket - knife. I think it was some six months afterwards - when I had for - gotten entirely the loss of the knife, and the subject never recurred to my memory in any way whatever - I dreamt one night that it was in the pocket of a certain pair of trousers I had cast off, I suppose about the same time as the loss of my knife. I awoke, and lay awake some time, till it occurred to me to prove the truth of my dream. I went upstairs in search of the said pair of trousers, and sure enough there it was as I had dreamt The peculiarity of the above is this, that when I was awake and in my senses no train of thought or retracing of my memory would carry me back to the pair of trousers or to the knife, and it was quite as an experiment that I went in search of them.

"Augustus Brockelbank."

1 Vol. viii., part xxii. of Proceedings S. P. R.

There is much in such a flash of memory as might sometimes occur in waking hours, for it is probable that Mr. Brockelbank had at one time observed that the knife was in that pocket He may have very rapidly forgotten the fact; but nevertheless there was probably some supraliminal knowledge for the dream to revive.

We will now take three cases where the memory in the waking state was incapable of seeing the lost article: - 1

4thFebruary, 1889.

"On reaching Morley's Hotel at 5 o'clock on Tuesday, 29th January, 1889, I missed a gold brooch, which I supposed I had left in a fitting room at Swan & Edgars. I sent there at once, but was very disappointed to hear that after a diligent search they could not find the brooch. I was very vexed, and worried about the brooch, and that night dreamed that I should find it shut up in a number of the Queen newspaper that had been on the table, and in my dream I saw the very page where it would be. I had noticed one of the plates on that page. Directly after breakfast I went to Swan & Edgar's and asked to see the papers, at the same time telling the young ladies about the dream, and where I had seen the brooch. The papers had been moved from that room, but were found, and to the astonishment of the young ladies, I said: 'This is the one that contains my brooch'; and there at the very page I expected I found it.