man even then. How long is that?
Since she died, it must be ten years.

My thoughts wandered about among all sorts of _bric-a-brac_ memories.
Presently something brought me back to the present. Why must this fair
girl from the north die miserably here in India? Ah yes! the eternal
why. Why did we go at such a season into the forests of the Terai? it
was madness; we knew it was, and Ram Lal knew it too. Hence his warning.
O Ram Lal, you are a wise old man, with your gray beard and you mists of
wet white velvet and your dark sayings! Ram Lal, will you riddle me,
also, my weird that I must dree?

A cold draught passed over my head, and I turned on my couch to see
whence it came. I started bolt upright, and my hair stood on end with
sudden terror. I had uttered the name of Ram Lal aloud in my reverie,
and there he sat on a chair by the door, as gray as ever, with his long
staff leaning from his feet across his breast and shoulder. He looked at
me quietly.

"I come opportunely, Mr. Griggs, it seems. _Lupus in fabula._ I hear my
name pronounced as I enter the door. This is flattering to a man of my
modest pretensions to social popularity. You would like me to tell you
your fortune? Well, I am not a fortune-teller."

"Never mind my fortune. Will Miss Westonhaugh recover?"

"No. She will die at sundown."

"How do you know, since you say you are no prophet?"

"Because I am a doctor of medicine. M.D. of Edinburgh."

"Why can you not save her then? A man who is a Scotch doctor, and who
possesses the power of performing such practical jokes on nature as you
exhibited the other night, might do something. However, I suppose I am
not talking to you at all. You are in Thibet with Shere Ali. This is
your astral body, and if I were near enough, I could poke my fingers
right through you, as you sit there, telling me you are an Edinburgh
doctor, forsooth."

"Quite right, Mr. Griggs. At the present moment my body is quietly
asleep in a lamastery in Thibet, and this is my astral shape, which,
from force of habit, I begin to like almost as well. But to be
serious----"

"I think it is very serious, your going about in this casual manner."

"To be serious. I warned Isaacs that he should not allow the tiger-hunt
to come off. He would not heed my warning. It is too late now. I am not
omnipotent."

"Of course not. Still, you might be of some use if you went there. While
there is life there is hope."

"Proverbs," said Earn Lai sco