“One evening I was at the village of Dewas Kudea, after a very long afternoon and evening march from Muktul, and I lay down very weary; but the barking of village dogs, the baying of jackals and over-fatigue and heat prevented sleep, and I was wide awake and restless.  Suddenly, for my tent door was wide open, I saw the face and figure so familiar to me, but looking older, and with a sad and troubled expression; the dress was white and seemed covered with a profusion of lace and glistened in the bright moonlight.  The arms were stretched out, and a low plaintive cry of ‘Do not let me go!  Do not let me go!’ reached me.  I sprang forward, but the figure receded, growing fainter and fainter till I could see it no more, but the low plaintive tones still sounded.  I had run barefooted across the open space where my tents were pitched, very much to the astonishment of the sentry on guard, but I returned to my tent without speaking to him.  I wrote to my father.  I wished to know whether there were any hope for me.  He wrote back to me these words:  ’Too late, my dear son—­on the very day of the vision you describe to me, A. was married’.”

The colonel did not keep his determination not to marry, for his Life is edited by his daughter, who often heard her father mention the incident, “precisely in the same manner, and exactly as it is in the book”. {103}

If thinking of friends and lovers, lost or dead, could bring their forms and voices before the eye and ear of flesh, there would be a world of hallucinations around us.  “But it wants heaven-sent moments for this skill,” and few bridal nights send a vision and a voice to the bed of a wakeful lover far away.

Stories of this kind, appearances of the living or dying really at a distance, might be multiplied to any extent.  They are all capable of explanation, if we admit the theory of telepathy, of a message sent by an unknown process from one living man’s mind to another.  Where more than one person shares the vision, we may suppose that the influence comes directly from A to B, C and D, or comes from A to B, and is by him unconsciously “wired” on to B and C, or is “suggested” to them by B’s conduct or words.

In that case animals may be equally affected, thus, if B seems alarmed, that may frighten his dog, or the alarm of a dog, caused by some noise or smell, heard or smelt by him, may frighten B, C and D, and make one or all of them see a ghost.

Popular opinion is strongly in favour of beasts seeing ghosts.  The people of St. Kilda, according to Martin, held that cows shared the visions of second-sighted milk-maids.  Horses are said to shy on the scene of murders.  Scott’s horse ran away (home) when Sir Walter saw the bogle near Ashiestiel.  In a case given later the dog shut up in a room full of unexplained noises, yelled and whined.  The same dog (an intimate friend of my own) bristled up his hair and growled before his master saw the Grey