He
saw that it was his own figure, his very self, and in silent terror,
compelled by what force he knew not, he advanced—charmed as the bird is
by the snake, mesmerised or hypnotised—to meet this other self. As he
felt the yielding sand closing over him he awoke in the agony of death,
trembling with fear, and, strange to say, with the silly man’s prophecy
seeming to sound in his ears: “‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!’ See
thyself and repent ere the quicksand swallow thee!”

So convinced was he that this was no dream that he arose, early as it
was, and dressing himself without disturbing his wife took his way to
the shore. His heart fell when he came across a series of footsteps on
the sands, which he at once recognised as his own. There was the same
wide heel, the same square toe; he had no doubt now that he had
actually been there, and half horrified, and half in a state of dreamy
stupor, he followed the footsteps, and found them lost in the edge of
the yielding quicksand. This gave him a terrible shock, for there were
no return steps marked on the sand, and he felt that there was some
dread mystery which he could not penetrate, and the penetration of
which would, he feared, undo him. In this state of affairs he took two wrong courses. Firstly he kept his
trouble to himself, and, as none of his family had any clue to it,
every innocent word or expression which they used supplied fuel to the
consuming fire of his imagination. Secondly he began to read books
professing to bear upon the mysteries of dreaming and of mental
phenomena generally, with the result that every wild imagination of
every crank or half-crazy philosopher became a living germ of unrest in
the fertilising soil of his disordered brain. Thus negatively and
positively all things began to work to a common end. Not the least of
his disturbing causes was Saft Tammie, who had now become at certain
times of the day a fixture at his gate. After a while, being interested
in the previous state of this individual, he made inquiries regarding
his past with the following result. Saft Tammie was popularly believed to be the son of a laird in one of
the counties round the Firth of Forth. He had been partially educated
for the ministry, but for some cause which no one ever knew threw up
his prospects suddenly, and, going to Peterhead in its days of whaling
prosperity, had there taken service on a whaler. Here off and on he had
remained for some years, getting gradually more and more silent in his
habits, till finally his shipmates protested against so taciturn a
mate, and he had found service amongst the fishing smacks of the
northern fleet. He had worked for many years at the fishing with always
the reputation of being “a wee bit daft,” till at length he had
gradually settled down at Crooken, where the laird, doubtless knowing
something of his family history, had given him a job which practically
made him a pensioner. The minister who gave the information finished
thus:—

“It is a very strange thing, but the man seems to have some odd kind of
gift. Whether it be that ‘second sight’ which we Scotch people are so
prone to believe in, or some other occult form of knowledge, I know
not, but nothing of a disastrous tendency ever occurs in this place but
the men with whom he lives are able to quote after the event some
saying of his which certainly appears to have foretold it. He gets
uneasy or excited—wakes up, in fact—when death is in the air!”

This did not in any way tend to lessen Mr. Markam’s concern, but on the
contrary seemed to impress the prophecy more deeply on his mind. Of all
the books which he had read on his new subject of study none interested
him so much as a German one _Die Döppleganger_, by Dr. Heinrich von
Aschenberg, formerly of Bonn. Here he learned for the first time of
cases where men had led a double existence—each nature being quite
apart from the other—the body being always a reality with one spirit,
and a simulacrum with the other. Needless to say that Mr. Markam
realised this theory as exactly suiting his own case. The glimpse which
he had of his own back the night of his escape from the quicksand—his
own footmarks disappearing into the quicksand with no return steps
visible—the prophecy of Saft Tammie about his meeting himself and
perishing in the quicksand—all lent aid to the conviction that he was
in his own person an instance of the döppleganger. Being then conscious
of a double life he took steps to prove its existence to his own
satisfaction. To this end on one night before going to bed he wrote his
name in chalk on the soles of his shoes. That night he dreamed of the
quicksand, and of his visiting it—dreamed so vividly that on walking in
the grey of the dawn he could not believe that he had not been there. Arising, without disturbing his wife, he sought his shoes. The chalk signatures were undisturbed! He dressed himself and stole out
softly. This time the tide was in, so he crossed the dunes and struck
the shore on the further side of the quicksand. There, oh, horror of
horrors! he saw his own footprints dying into the abyss! He went home a desperately sad man. It seemed incredible that he, an
elderly commercial man, who had passed a long and uneventful life in
the pursuit of business in the midst of roaring, practical London,
should thus find himself enmeshed in mystery and horror, and that he
should discover that he had two existences. He could not speak of his
trouble even to his own wife, for well he knew that she would at once
require the fullest particulars of that other life—the one which she
did not know; and that she would at the start not only imagine but
charge him with all manner of infidelities on the head of it. And so
his brooding grew deeper and deeper still. One evening—the tide then
going out and the moon being at the full—he was sitting waiting for
dinner when the maid announced that Saft Tammie was making a
disturbance outside because he would not be let in to see him. He was
very indignant, but did not like the maid to think that he had any fear
on the subject, and so told her to bring him in. Tammie entered,
walking more briskly than ever with his head up and a look of vigorous
decision in the eyes that were so generally cast down. As soon as he
entered he said:

“I have come to see ye once again—once again; and there ye sit, still
just like a cockatoo on a pairch. Weel, mon, I forgie ye! Mind ye that,
I forgie ye!” And without a word more he turned and walked out of the
house, leaving the master in speechless indignation. After dinner he determined to pay another visit to the quicksand—he
would not allow even to himself that he was afraid to go. And so, about
nine o’clock, in full array, he marched to the beach, and passing over
the sands sat on the skirt of the nearer rock. The full moon was behind
him and its light lit up the bay so that its fringe of foam, the dark
outline of the headland, and the stakes of the salmon-nets were all
emphasised.