402 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



after a considerable absence from Scotland, he met in 

 the street his father's old butler, looking very pale and 

 wan. He asked him what brought him to Edinburgh. 

 The butler replied, " To meet your honour, and solicit 

 your interference with my lord to recover a sum due 

 to me, which the steward at the last settlement did not 

 pay." Lord Erskine then told the butler to step with 

 him into a bookseller's shop close by, but on turning 

 round again he was not to be seen. Puzzled at this he 

 found out the man's wife, who lived in Edinburgh, 

 when he learnt for the first time that the butler was 

 dead, and that he had told his wife, on his death-bed, 

 that the steward had wronged him of some money, and 

 that when Master Tom returned he would see her 

 righted. This Lord Erskine promised to do, and 

 shortly afterwards kept his promise.' Lady Morgan 

 then says, ' Either Lord Erskine did or did not believe 

 this strange story : if he did, what a strange aberration 

 of intellect ! if he did not, what a stranger aberration 

 from truth ! My opinion is that he did believe it.' 

 Mr. Owen deals with the hypothesis that aberration of 

 intellect was in question, and gives several excellent 

 reasons for rejecting that hypothesis ; and he arrives 

 at the conclusion that the butler's phantom had really 

 appeared after his death. ' The natural inference from 

 the facts, if they are admitted, is,' he says, ' that under 

 certain circumstances, which as yet we may be unable 

 to define, those over whom the death-change has 

 passed, still interested in the concerns of earth, may 

 for a time at least retain the power of occasional 



