lison," replied Mrs. Dearman, and added: "But
why only one of them?"

Mr. Ross-Ellison smiled, glanced round the luxuriously appointed table
and the company of fair women and brave men--and thought of a
far-distant and little-known place called Mekran Kot and of a phantom
cavalry corps that haunted a valley in its vicinity.

"Only one worth telling," said he.

"Well,--first case," began Colonel Jackson, "I was once driving past a
cottage on my way home from College (in Ireland), and I saw the old lady
who lived in that cottage come out of the door, cross her bit of garden,
go through a gate, scuttle over the railway-line and enter a fenced
field that had belonged to her husband, and which she (and a good many
other people) believed rightly belonged to her.

"'There goes old Biddy Maloney pottering about in that plot of ground
again,' thinks I. 'She's got it on the brain since her law-suit.' I knew
it was Biddy, of course, not only because of her coming out of Biddy's
house, but because it was Biddy's figure, walk, crutch-stick, and
patched old cloak. When I got home I happened to say to Mother: 'I saw
poor old Biddy Maloney doddering round that wretched field as I came
along'.

"'What?' said my mother, 'why, your father was called to her, as she was
dying, hours ago, and she's not been out of her bed for weeks.' When my
father came in, I learned that Biddy was dead an hour before I saw
her--before I left the railway station in fact! What do you make of
that? Is there any 'explanation'?"

"Some other old lady," suggested Mrs. Dearman.

"No. There was nobody else in those parts mistakable for Biddy Maloney,
and no other old woman was in or near the house while my father was
there. We sifted the matter carefully. It was Biddy Maloney and no one
else."

"Auto-suggestion. Visualization on the retina of an idea in the mind.
Optical illusion," hazarded Mrs. Dearman.

"No good. I hadn't realized I was approaching Biddy Maloney's cottage
until I saw her coming out of it and I certainly hadn't thought of Biddy
Maloney until my eye fell upon her. And it's a funny optical illusion
that deceives one into seeing an old lady opening gates, crossing
railways and limping away into fenced fields."

"H'm! What was the other case?" asked Mrs. Dearman, turning to Mr.
Ross-Ellison.

"That happened here in India at a station called Duri, away in the
Northern Presidency, where I was then--er--living for a time. On the day
after