ull of people; and yet here, look you, in
defiance of every law of probability, in direct outrage of Nature's
ordinance, there had appeared to me a face from the grave.

Kitty's Arab had gone _through_ the 'rickshaw: so that my first hope
that some woman marvelously like Mrs. Wessington had hired the carriage
and the coolies with their old livery was lost. Again and again I went
round this treadmill of thought; and again and again gave up baffled and
in despair. The voice was as inexplicable as the apparition. I had
originally some wild notion of confiding it all to Kitty; of begging her
to marry me at once; and in her arms defying the ghostly occupant of the
'rickshaw. "After all," I argued, "the presence of the 'rickshaw is in
itself enough to prove the existence of a spectral illusion. One may see
ghosts of men and women, but surely never of coolies and carriages. The
whole thing is absurd. Fancy the ghost of a hill-man!"

Next morning I sent a penitent note to Kitty, imploring her to overlook
my strange conduct of the previous afternoon. My Divinity was still very
wroth, and a personal apology was necessary. I explained, with a fluency
born of night-long pondering over a falsehood, that I had been attacked
with a sudden palpitation of the heart--the result of indigestion. This
eminently practical solution had its effect; and Kitty and I rode out
that afternoon with the shadow of my first lie dividing us.

Nothing would please her save a canter round Jakko. With my nerves still
unstrung from the previous night I feebly protested against the notion,
suggesting Observatory Hill, Jutogh, the Boileaugunge road--anything
rather than the Jakko round. Kitty was angry and a little hurt, so I
yielded from fear of provoking further misunderstanding, and we set out
together towards Chota Simla. We walked a greater part of the way, and,
according to our custom, cantered from a mile or so below the Convent to
the stretch of level road by the Sanjowlie Reservoir. The wretched
horses appeared to fly, and my heart beat quicker and quicker as we
neared the crest of the ascent. My mind had been full of Mrs. Wessington
all the afternoon; and every inch of the Jakko road bore witness to our
old-time walks and talks. The boulders were full of it; the pines sang
it aloud overhead; the rain-fed torrents giggled and chuckled unseen
over the shameful story; and the wind in my ears chanted the iniquity
aloud.

As a fitting climax, in the m