Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/106

86 Sunday. I think I must have got a chill; anyhow, I had raging toothache from Sunday night till " the day before, when she had the tooth out with gas. The letter went on to give a graphic description, with a sketch, of her appearance during the time that her face was swollen.

On the receipt of this letter, H. B. was so much astonished to ﬁnd that his dream about the swollen face was true that he added a postscript to his letter (which had not yet gone) to say that he had seen her with a swollen face at a window from which smoke was coming, and to ask if that part of the dream was also true.

Her letter in answer to that I have also seen. It is dated from Filey on August 31, 1901, and I copy the important part:—"I was awfully interested in your dream; it is the queerest thing I have heard of for ages. The funny part of it is that I got the cold which made my toothache so bad by going out on Sunday evening, hearing that there was a fire on the Crescent. It was Mrs. K.'s house; one of the bedrooms got on fire. It was nothing much, and was put out before the Fire Brigade arrived. . . . Auntie M. first noticed smoke coming out of the window." The writer goes on to say (and this seems to me very interesting), "M. gave me a sleeping powder on Sunday night, so I slept heavily, in spite of the pain." She also says that she thought about him a good deal on Monday night when she had seen what a sight she was, but not on Sunday.

The case is interesting, not only from the detailed nature of the coincidence, but because it illustrates one of the chief obstacles to obtaining good evidence in cases of this kind. The letter