'
'Pardon me. But you say that you know. That is
a good deal to say, don't you think? Perhaps you
will not mind the trouble of saying how you learned.'
'You will call it an hallucination,' Hawver
said, 'but that does not matter.' And he told the
story.
'Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the
hot weather term in the town of Meridian. The rela-
tive at whose house I had intended to stay was ill, so
I sought other quarters. After some difficulty I suc-
ceeded in renting a vacant dwelling that had been
occupied by an eccentric doctor of the name of
Mannering, who had gone away years before, no
one knew where, not even his agent. He had built
the house himself and had lived in it with an old
servant for about ten years. His practice, never very
extensive, had after a few years been given up en-
tirely. Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself
almost altogether from social life and become a
recluse. I was told by the village doctor, about the
only person with whom he held any relations, that
during his retirement he had devoted himself to
a single line of study, the result of which he had
expounded in a book that did not commend itself to
the approval of his professional brethren, who, in-
deed, considered him not entirely sane. I have not
seen the book and cannot now recall the title of it, but
I am told that it expounded a rather startling theory.
He held that it was possible in the case of many a
person in good health to forecast his death with
precision, several months in advance of the event.
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