“But that the entire affair took place subjectively in the man’s own consciousness, I have no doubt,” he went on, in reply to my questions; “for my secretary who has been to the town to investigate, discovered his signature in the visitors’ book, and proved by it that he had arrived on September 8th, and left suddenly without paying his bill.  He left two days later, and they still were in possession of his dirty brown bag and some tourist clothes.  I paid a few francs in settlement of his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him.  The daughter was absent from home, but the proprietress, a large woman very much as he described her, told my secretary that he had seemed a very strange, absent-minded kind of gentleman, and after his disappearance she had feared for a long time that he had met with a violent end in the neighbouring forest where he used to roam about alone.

“I should like to have obtained a personal interview with the daughter so as to ascertain how much was subjective and how much actually took place with her as Vezin told it.  For her dread of fire and the sight of burning must, of course, have been the intuitive memory of her former painful death at the stake, and have thus explained why he fancied more than once that he saw her through smoke and flame.”

“And that mark on his skin, for instance?” I inquired.

“Merely the marks produced by hysterical brooding,” he replied, “like the stigmata of the religieuses, and the bruises which appear on the bodies of hypnotised subjects who have been told to expect them.  This is very common and easily explained.  Only it seems curious that these marks should have remained so long in Vezin’s case.  Usually they disappear quickly.”

“Obviously he is still thinking about it all, brooding, and living it all over again,” I ventured.

“Probably.  And this makes me fear that the end of his trouble is not yet.  We shall hear of him again.  It is a case, alas!  I can do little to alleviate.”

Dr. Silence spoke gravely and with sadness in his voice.

“And what do you make of the Frenchman in the train?” I asked further—­“the man who warned him against the place, a cause du sommeil et a cause des chats? Surely a very singular incident?”

“A very singular incident indeed,” he made answer slowly, “and one I can only explain on the basis of a highly improbable coincidence—­”

“Namely?”

“That the man was one who had himself stayed in the town and undergone there a similar experience.  I should like to find this man and ask him.  But the crystal is useless here, for I have no slightest clue to go upon, and I can only conclude that some singular psychic affinity, some force still active in his being out of the same past life, drew him thus to the personality of Vezin, and enabled him to fear what might happen to him, and thus to warn him as he did.