box, ankle deep in gold. He had already filled a
huge digger's belt that was round his waist, and
a courier's bag that hung at his side. A carpet
bag, half full, lay at his feet, and, as he let it
fall to open the window bolt, it gushed forth a
perfect torrent of gold. He did not utter a
word. There were ropes at the window, as if
he had been lowering, or preparing to lower,
bags into the side alley. He gave a whistle
and some vehicle could be heard to drive furiously
off.

"Surrender, you gallows-bird! I know you,"
cried the major. "Surrender! I've got you now,
old boy."

Levison's only reply was to pull the trigger
of the revolver; fortunately, there was no
discharge. I had forgotten to cap it.

"The infernal thing is not capped. One for
you, Bobby," he said quietly. Then hurling it
at the major with a sudden fury, he threw open
the window and leaped out.

I leaped after him—it was a ground floor
room—raising a hue and cry. Arnott remained
to guard the money.

A moment more and a wild rabble of soldiers,
sailors, mongrel idlers, and porters, were pursuing
the flying wretch with screams and hoots,
as in the dim light (the lamps were just beginning
to be kindled) we tore after him, doubling
and twisting like a hare, among the obstacles
that crowded the quay. Hundreds of blows
were aimed at him; hundreds of hands were
stretched to seize him; he wrested himself from
one; he felled another; he leaped over a third;
a Zouave's clutch was all but on him, when suddenly
his foot caught in a mooring ring, and he
fell headlong into the harbour. There was a
shout as he splashed and disappeared in the dark
water, near which the light of only one lamp
moved and glittered. I ran down the nearest
steps and waited while the gendarmes took a boat
and stolidly dragged with hooks for the body.

"They are foxes, these old thieves. I remember
this man here at Toulon. I saw him branded.
I knew his face again in a moment. He has
dived under the shipping, got into some barge
and hid. You'll never see him again," said an old
grey gendarme who had taken me into the boat.

"Yes we shall, for here he is!" cried a second,
stooping down and lifting a body out of the water
by the hair.

"Oh, he was an artful file," said a man
from a boat behind us. It was Arnott. "Just
came to see how you were getting on, sir.
It's all right with the money; Julia's minding
it. I often said that fellow would catch
it some day, now he's got it. He all but had
you, Mr. Blamyre. He'd have cut your throat
when you were asleep, rather than miss the
money. But I was on his track. He didn't
know me. This was my first cruise for some
time against this sort of rogue. Well; his name
is off the books; that's one good thing. Come,
comrades, bring that body to land. We must
strip him of the money he has upon him, which at
least did one good thing while in his possession
—it sent the scoundrel to the bottom."

Even in death, the long face looked craftily
respectable when we turned it to the lamp-light.

Arnott told me all, in his jovial way, on my
return to the hotel, where I loaded him and Mrs.
B. (another officer) with thanks. On the night
I started, he had received orders from the London
head office to follow me, and watch Levison.
He had not had time to communicate
with my partners. The driver of our train had
been bribed to make the engine break down at
Fort Rouge, where Levison's accomplices were
waiting with carts to carry off the luggage in
the confusion and darkness, or even during a
sham riot and fight. This plan Arnott had
frustrated by getting the police to telegraph
from Paris, for soldiers to be sent from Lyons,
and be kept in readiness, at the station. The
champagne he spilt had been drugged.
Levison, defeated in his first attempt, had then
resolved to try other means. My unlucky
disclosure of the mystery of the letter-lock had
furnished him with the power of opening that
one chest. The break-down of the steamer,
which was accidental (as far as could ever be
ascertained), gave him a last opportunity.

That night, thanks to Arnott, I left Marseilles
with not one single piece of money lost. The
journey was prosperous. The loan was effected
on very profitable terms. Our house has flourished
ever since, and Minnie and I have flourished
likewise—and increased.

                              VI.
      TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.

I have always noticed a prevalent want
of courage, even among persons of superior
intelligence and culture, as to imparting their
own psychological experiences when those have
been of a strange sort. Almost all men are
afraid that what they could relate in such wise
would find no parallel or response in a listener's
internal life, and might be suspected or laughed
at. A truthful traveller who should have seen
some extraordinary creature in the likeness
of a sea-serpent, would have no fear of
mentioning it; but the same traveller having had
some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of
thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other
remarkable mental impression, would hesitate
considerably before he would own to it. To
this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity
in which such subjects are involved.
We do not habitually communicate our experiences
of these subjective things, as we do our
experiences of objective creation. The
consequence is, that the general stock of experience
in this regard appears exceptional, and really
is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect.

In what I am going to relate I have no
intention of setting up, opposing, or supporting,
any theory whatever. I know the history of
the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the
case of the wife of a late Astronomer Royal as