even my helpless situation would, perhaps, be no excuse for me. But as things are I cannot surely be wrong, after all that has passed between us, in forgetting that you are a friend of only three months' standing.'

She gave me the letter. It began abruptly, without any preliminary form of address, as follows --

`Do you believe in dreams? I hope, for your own sake, that you do. See what Scripture says about dreams and their fulfilment (Genesis xl. 8, xli. 25; Daniel iv. 18-25), and take the warning I send you before it is too late.

`Last night I dreamed about you, Miss Fairlie. I dreamed that I was standing inside the communion rails of a church -- I on one side of the altar-table, and the clergyman, with his surplice and his prayer-book, on the other.

`After a time there walked towards us, down the aisle of the church, a man and a woman, coming to be married. You were the woman. You looked so pretty and innocent in your beautiful white silk dress, and your long white lace veil, that my heart felt for you, and the tears came into my eyes.

`They were tears of pity, young lady, that heaven blesses; and instead of falling from my eyes like the everyday tears that we all of us shed, they turned into two rays of light which slanted nearer and nearer to the man standing at the altar with you, till they touched his breast. The two rays sprang in arches like two rainbows between me and him. I looked along them, and I saw down into his inmost heart.

`The outside of the man you were marrying was fair enough to see. He was neither tall nor short -- he was a little below the middle size. A light, active, high-spirited man -- about five-and-forty years old, to look at. He had a pale face, and was bald over the forehead, but had dark hair on the rest of his head. His beard was shaven on his chin, but was let to grow, of a fine rich brown, on his cheeks and his upper lip. His eyes were brown too, and very bright; his nose straight and handsome, and delicate enough to have done for a woman's. His hands the same. He was troubled from time to time with a dry hacking cough, and when he put up his white right hand to his mouth, he showed the red scar of an old wound across the back of it. Have I dreamt of the right man? You know best, Miss Fairlie, and you can say if I was deceived or not. Read next, what I saw beneath the outside -- I entreat you, read, and profit.

`I looked along the two rays of light, and I saw down into his inmost heart. It was black as night, and on it were written, in the red flaming letters which are the handwriting of the fallen angel, ``Without pity and without remorse. He has strewn with misery the paths of others, and he will live to strew with misery the path of this woman by his side.'' I read that, and then the rays of light shifted and pointed over his shoulder; and there, behind him, stood a fiend laughing. And the rays of light shifted once more, and pointed over your shoulder; and there, behind you, stood an angel weeping. And the rays of light shifted for the third time, and pointed straight between you and that man. They widened and widened, thrusting you both asunder, one from the other. And the clergyman looked for the marriage-service in vain; it was gone out of the book, and he shut up the leaves, and put it from him in despair. And I woke with my eyes full of tears and my heart beating -- for I believe in dreams.

`Believe too, Miss Fairlie -- I beg of you, for your own sake, believe as I do. Joseph and Daniel, and others in the Scripture, believed in dreams. Inquire into the past life of that man with the scar on his hand, before you say the words that make you his miserable wife. I don't give you this warning on my account, but on yours. I have an interest in your well-being that will live as long as I draw breath. Your mother's daughter has a tender place in my heart -- for your mother was my first, my best, my only friend.'

There the extraordinary letter ended, without a signature of any sort.

The handwriting afforded no prospect of a clue. It was traced on ruled lines, in the cramped, conventional copy-book character technically termed `mall hand.' It was feeble and faint, and defaced by blots, but had otherwise nothing to distinguish it.