"Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the hot weather term in the
town of Meridian. The relative at whose house I had intended to stay
was ill, so I sought other quarters. After some difficulty I
succeeded 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 entirely. Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself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, indeed, 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. The
limit, I think, was eighteen months. There were local tales of his
having exerted his powers of prognosis, or perhaps you would say
diagnosis; and it was said that in every instance the person whose
friends he had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time, and
from no assignable cause. All this, however, has nothing to do with
what I have to tell; I thought it might amuse a physician.

"The house was furnished, just as he had lived in it. It was a
rather gloomy dwelling for one who was neither a recluse nor a
student, and I think it gave something of its character to me--
perhaps some of its former occupant's character; for always I felt in