An instantaneous and dreadful sickness seized me. I struggled – I gasped – I died.«

»You will hardly persist now,« said I, smiling, »that the whole of your adventure was not a dream. You are not prepared to maintain that you are dead?«

When I said these words, I of course expected some lively sally from Bedloe in reply; but, to my astonishment, he hesitated, trembled, became fearfully pallid, and remained silent. I looked toward Templeton. He sat erect and rigid in his chair – his teeth chattered, and his eyes were starting from their sockets. »Proceed!« he at length said hoarsely to Bedloe.

»For many minutes,« continued the latter, »my sole sentiment – my sole feeling – was that of darkness and nonentity, with the consciousnes of death. At length there seemed to pass a violent and sudden shock through my soul, as if of electricity. With it came the sense of elasticity and of light. This latter I felt – not saw. In an instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no bodily, no visible, audible, or palpable presence. The crowd had departed. The tumult had ceased. The city was in comparative repose. Beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple, the whole head greatly swollen and disfigured. But all these things I felt – not saw. I took interest in nothing. Even the corpse seemed a matter in which I had no concern. Volition I had none, but appeard to be impelled into motion, and flitted buoyantly out of the city, retracing the circuitous path by which I had entered it. When I had attained that point of the ravine in the mountains at which I had encountered the hyena, I again experienced a shock as of a galvanic battery; the sense of weight, of volition, of substance, returned. I became my original self, and bent my steps eagerly homeward – but the past had not lost the vividness of the real – and not now, even for an instant, can I compel my understanding to regard it as a dream.«

»Nor was it,« said Templeton, with an air of deep solemnity, »yet it would be difficult to say how otherwise it should be termed. Let us suppose only, that the soul of the man of to-day is upon the verge of some stupendous psychal discoveries. Let us content ourselves with this supposition. For the rest I have some explanation to make. Here is a water-color drawing, which I should have shown you before, but which an unaccountable sentiment of horror has hitherto prevented me from showing.«

We looked at the picture which he presented. I saw nothing in it of an extraordinary character; but its effect upon Bedloe was prodigious. He nearly fainted as he gazed. And yet it was but a miniature portrait – a miraculously accurate one, to be sure – of his own very remarkable features. At least this was my thought as I regarded it.

»You will perceive,« said Templeton, »the date of this picture – it is here, scarcely visible, in this corner – 1780. In this year was the portrait taken.