something on the table beside my bed. The room was not dark, as the curtains were drawn back, and the blinds were up, and there are some strong lights in the street outside. As I sat up all seemed dark except that I saw a face for a second, and the same face a little farther to the right and a little lower down, also for a second. I am not sure whether I saw the two faces (which were exactly the same) at the same moment or one just after the other, but I think the sight of them overlapped. The faces were of Mrs. J. W., who lives at the village at home. I only saw her head, all else being swallowed in darkness. I noticed her black cap, without any white, which she always wears. Her face was not strongly illuminated, and wore her usual expression. There was no appearance of life or action about it.
I was sufficiently struck by this to say to myself that I would write to you next morning about it, so that if there was any coincidence about it you would have evidence beforehand. I also turned over to the other side of my bed, took up the watch standing there and noticed the time by it was 4.19 a.m. As this watch was 5 minutes fast by "Big Ben," the real time must have been just 4.14 a.m. Unluckily when I woke next morning the whole thing went clean out of my recollection, and I never thought of it again till this morning (March 7th), when I received a letter from Mrs. N. [wife of the clergyman at Miss R.'s country home], dated March 6th, who among other things wrote as follows:
"Poor old J. W. at the village died yesterday morning early. He has been ill for a long time."
Miss R. adds that in the absence of a written memorandum she could not determine with certainty whether the date of her vision was on the morning of the 5th or 6th; but from independent evidence she is "pretty confident" that it was the 5th. It appears from Mrs. N.'s further letters that J. W. died at about 2.50 a.m. on the 5th, and that
