"I have proved all this, experimentally, times without number.
"Mr Vercoe must have had--as indeed many of us have--vices, in all probability, little suspected. The close proximity of the Buddha acted on them, and they began to leave his body and form a shape of their own. Had he allowed them to do so, all might have gone well; they would have been effectually overcome by the higher spiritual forces attached to the Buddha. But as soon as he saw a figure beginning to form--and no doubt it was very dreadful--he lost his head. His shrieks interrupted the work, the power of the Buddha was, _pro tempus_, at an end, and the extracted personality commenced at once to re-enter Vercoe. Rushing at him with that end in view, it so terrified him that he fled from the room, and it was at that stage that you appeared upon the scene. What followed is, of course, pure conjecture on my part, but I fear, I greatly fear, that by the time Mr Vercoe became unconscious the mischief was done, and the latter's evil personality had once again united with his other personalities."
"And what would be the after-effect, Mr O'Donnell?" the Baroness inquired anxiously.
"I fear a serious one," I replied evasively. "In the case of the doctor you mentioned, who committed murder, an evil ego had doubtless been expelled, and, receiving a rebuff, had reunited, for after a reunion the evil personality usually receives a new impetus and grows with amazing rapidity. Have you heard from Mr Vercoe lately?"
The Baroness shook her head. "Not for several months."
"Isn't it terrible?" she began, "Mr Vercoe committed suicide on Wednesday--the Birmingham papers--he was a Birmingham man--are full of it!"
The description of an adventure Mr Trobas, a friend of mine, had with a barrowvian in Brittany (and which I omitted to relate when referring to barrowvians), I now append as nearly as possible in his own words:--
"Night! A sky partially concealed from view by dark, fantastically shaped clouds, that, crawling along with a slow, stealthy motion, periodically obscure the moon. The crest of a hill covered with short-clipped grass, much worn away in places, and in the centre a Druidical circle broken and incomplete; a few of the stones are erect, the rest either lie at full length on the sward, close to the mystic ring, or at some considerable distance from it. Here and there are distinct evidences of recent digging, and at the base of one of the horizontal stones is an excavation of no little depth.