To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream.
Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact--from whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work of the mould.
Among the many devices for concealing smuggled goods in caves and pits of the earth, that of planting an apple-tree in a tray or box which was placed over the mouth of the pit is, I believe, unique, and it is detailed in one of the tales precisely as described by an old carrier of 'tubs'-- a man who was afterwards in my father's employ for over thirty years.

I never gathered from his reminiscences what means were adopted for lifting the tree, which, with its roots, earth, and receptacle, must have been of considerable weight.

There is no doubt, however, that the thing was done through many years.

My informant often spoke, too, of the horribly suffocating sensation produced by the pair of spirit-tubs slung upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of them for several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness.

He said that though years of his youth and young manhood were spent in this irregular business, his profits from the same, taken all together, did not average the wages he might have earned in a steady employment, whilst the fatigues and risks were excessive.
I may add that the first story in the series turns upon a physical possibility that may attach to women of imaginative temperament, and that is well supported by the experiences of medical men and other observers of such manifestations.
T.H.
April 1896.
AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a well- known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel to find his wife.