t as if a hand were
pressing on my shoulder. I turned round involuntarily, but no one was
there. Then I looked at the picture again, and always with the same
weird sensation that the man whom the picture represented had been
strong enough to make me feel his actual presence in the room, although
I could see nothing. There was no name on the picture of either subject
or artist, no possible clue to identity, and looked at as a picture
alone, there was nothing in the flat, conventional presentment of the
features to account for my experience. This made it the more remarkable.
I could scarcely tear myself away from the almost overwhelming sense of
the presence of some strong and strangely magnetic personality, but the
fast fading twilight warned me not to risk an ignominious retreat. So I
went hurriedly through the large and handsome drawing-room, which was
filled with portraits, chiefly of deceased governors and generals, many
of them admirably painted, and a striking contrast to the one poor and
commonplace picture already seen.

The absolute incongruity between the impression received and the object
which roused it, led me to make inquiries, in spite of my friend's jokes
over my powers of imagination.

"Anyway, I am going to clear this up," I said with determination; and in
a few days my perseverance was rewarded, and my impression amply
justified, by finding that I had been looking at the portrait--feeble
and poor as it was--of _Brigadier-General Nicholson_.

None of my readers need to be told that if any dead man could impress
himself upon the living, this would be the man capable of such a feat.

Even to this day there is a small religious sect in India called the
_Nicholasain_, who have handed down the memory of this "god rather than
man," who had to dismount from his horse occasionally, to thrash his
would-be worshippers, and put a stop to their inconvenient adoration!

Nicholson's brilliant achievements in the Mutiny; his absolute control
over men of the most diverse character; the devotion with which he
inspired his soldiers, and his own glorious death in the very moment of
victory--all these are matters of history.

I feel glad and grateful to have known, even for a few passing moments,
what that influence had been; and when I found out Brigadier-General
Nicholson's grave at Delhi, after my Ludlow Castle experience, I left my
flowers on the grave of an honoured acquaintance, rather than of a man
known to me