ction is entirely independent of the physical body, and in
support of this view I will cite yet another experience.

It was about the year 1875, when I was a young Assistant Commissioner in
the Punjab, that I was ordered to the small up-country station of
Akalpur,[1] and took possession of the Assistant Commissioner's
bungalow there. On the night of our arrival in the bungalow, my wife and
I had our charpoys--light Indian bedsteads--placed side by side in a
certain room and went to bed. The last thing I remembered before falling
asleep, was seeing my wife sitting up in bed, reading with a lamp on a
small table beside her. Suddenly I was awakened by the sound of a shot,
and starting up, found the room in darkness. I immediately lit a candle
which was on a chair by my bedside, and found my wife still sitting up
with the book on her knee, but the lamp had gone out.

"Take me away, take me into another room," she exclaimed.

"Why, what is the matter?" I said.

"Did you not see it?" she replied.

"See what?" I asked.

"Don't stop to ask any questions," she replied; "get me out of this room
at once; I can't stop here another minute."

I saw she was very frightened, so I called up the servants, and had our
beds removed to a room on the other side of the house, and then she told
me what she had seen. She said: "I was sitting reading as you saw me,
when looking round, I saw the figure of an Englishman standing close by
my bedside, a fine-looking man with a large fair moustache and dressed
in a grey suit. I was so surprised that I could not speak, and we
remained looking at each other for about a minute. Then he bent over me
and whispered: 'Don't be afraid,' and with that there was the sound of a
shot, and everything was in darkness."

"My dear girl, you must have fallen asleep over your book and been
dreaming," I said.

"No, I was wide awake," she insisted; "you were asleep, but I was awake
all the time. But you heard the shot, did you not?"

"Yes," I replied, "that is what woke me--some one must have fired a shot
outside."

"But why should any one be shooting in our garden at nearly midnight?"
my wife objected.

It certain seemed strange, but it was the only explanation that
suggested itself; so we had to agree to differ, she being convinced that
she had seen a ghost, and that the shot had been inside the room, and I
being equally convinced that she had been dreaming, and that the shot
had been fired outside the