ing person, having calmly slept through such a tragedy,
could be otherwise than indifferent next morning! Kuentze's story was far
more artistic than that of the waiter, and was skilfully interwoven with
shreds of truth, as I discovered later.

He said that "the poor lady" was in the habit of making herself a cup of
tea in the middle of the night when wakeful; also that she wore wide,
hanging muslin sleeves with her night attire. She had risen as usual
from a sleepless bed to make tea with her little Etna. Unfortunately,
she had set fire to a sleeve, which at once burned up, and in a few
moments she was enveloped in flames, owing to the flimsy material she
wore. Then the shrieks began which had so thrilled our nerves. A Russian
gentleman, sleeping near her, was awakened by the noise, and knowing
that she was a rich woman, and had brought many valuables with her, he
concluded she was being murdered; so he rushed to the rescue with a
revolver, found the burning woman, and he and the musjig at length
succeeded in putting out the flames.

The story was well told, and perfectly credible. Miss Greenlow could not
resist pointing out how entirely it annihilated my vision. No
suicide!--no knife!--no rush up the staircase!--nothing, in fact, that
might not have been, and, of course, _must have been_ a mere freak of
imagination during my troubled sleep. In the face of Kuentze's quiet and
detailed statement I could only agree with her, and so the matter rested
for some months. The poor woman meanwhile remained in the hospital, and
her son and daughter were telegraphed for from Paris. We found them at
the hotel on our return there, three weeks later, from Moscow. There was
then some slight hope of ultimate recovery, but within six or seven
weeks from the "accident" the unfortunate woman died from shock and
exhaustion.

From Russia we returned to Stockholm and Christiania, where Miss
Greenlow took the steamer for Hull, and I went up into the Dovre Feld
Mountains to join a Swedish friend, already mentioned in my chapter on
India.

I told her my story of the poor French _modiste_ and her sad and painful
accident, also about my curiously vivid and yet inaccurate vision, and
we discussed the latter in quite an S.P.R. spirit! We were then in a
very remote part of the Dovre Feld, where foreign papers were
practically inaccessible.

I had left my friend in Norway, and returned to England a week or two
before receiving a very interestin