murderer, looked disgustingly composed.

But the affair was growing serious. The comical side of it disappeared
before the sincerity and the intensity of her lamentations. Her
descendants, grouped around her, were too polite to reproach us openly,
but the expression of their faces was far from reassuring. The family
priest and astrologer stood by the old lady, Shastras in hand, ready to
begin the ceremony of purification. He solemnly covered the corpse with
a piece of new linen, and so hid from our eyes the sad remains on which
ants were literally swarming.

Mr. Y---- did his best to look unconcerned, but still, when the tactless
Miss X---- came to him, expressing her loud indignation at all these
superstitions of an inferior race, he at least seemed to remember that
our host knew English perfectly, and he did not encourage her farther
expressions of sympathy. He made no answer, but smiled contemptuously.
Our host approached the colonel with respectful salaams and invited us
to follow him.

"No doubt he is going to ask us to leave his house immediately!" was my
uncomfortable impression.

But my apprehension was not justified. At this epoch of my Indian
pilgrimage I was far, as yet, from having fathomed the metaphysical
depth of a Hindu heart.

Sham Rao began by delivering a very far-fetched, eloquent preface.
He reminded us that he, personally, was an enlightened man, a man who
possessed all the advantages of a Western education. He said that, owing
to this, he was not quite sure that the body of the vampire was actually
inhabited by his late brother. Darwin, of course, and some other great
naturalists of the West, seemed to believe in the transmigration of
souls, but, as far as he understood, they believed in it in an inverse
sense; that is to say, if a baby had been born to his mother exactly at
the moment of the vampire's death, this baby would indubitably have
had a great likeness to a vampire, owing to the decaying atoms of the
vampire being so close to her.

"Is not this an exact interpretation of the Darwinian school?" he asked.

We modestly answered that, having traveled almost incessantly during the
last year, we could not help being a bit behindhand in the questions
of modern science, and that we were not able to follow its latest
conclusions.

"But I have followed them!" rejoined the good-natured Sham Rao, with a
touch of pomposity. "And so I hope I may be allowed to say that I have
understood and