round the corner, the wearer of the hat, who rode a pony and was attended by two native grooms.  “At this time the two dogs came, and crouching at my side, gave low frightened whimpers.  The moon was at the full, a tropical moon, so bright that you could see to read a newspaper by its light, and I saw the party above me advance as plainly as if it were noon-day; they were above me some eight or ten feet on the bridle road. . . .  On the party came, . . . and now I had better describe them.  The rider was in full dinner dress, with white waistcoat and a tall chimney-pot hat, and he sat on a powerful hill pony (dark-brown, with black mane and tail) in a listless sort of way, the reins hanging loosely from both hands.”  Grooms led the pony and supported the rider.  Mr. Barter, knowing that there was no place they could go to but his own house, cried “Quon hai?” (who is it?), adding in English, “Hullo, what the devil do you want here?” The group halted, the rider gathered up the reins with both hands, and turning, showed Mr. Barter the known features of the late Lieutenant B.

He was very pale, the face was a dead man’s face, he was stouter than when Mr. Barter knew him and he wore a dark Newgate fringe.

Mr. Barter dashed up the bank, the earth thrown up in making the bridle path crumbled under him, he fell, scrambled on, reached the bridle path where the group had stopped, and found nobody.  Mr. Barter ran up the path for a hundred yards, as nobody could go down it except over a precipice, and neither heard nor saw anything.  His dogs did not accompany him.

Next day Mr. Barter gently led his friend Deane to talk of Lieutenant B., who said that the lieutenant “grew very bloated before his death, and while on the sick list he allowed the fringe to grow in spite of all we could say to him, and I believe he was buried with it”.  Mr. Barter then asked where he got the pony, describing it minutely.

“He bought him at Peshawur, and killed him one day, riding in his reckless fashion down the hill to Trete.”

Mr. Barter and his wife often heard the horse’s hoofs later, though he doubts if any one but B. had ever ridden the bridle path.  His Hindoo bearer he found one day armed with a lattie, being determined to waylay the sound, which “passed him like a typhoon”. {74} Here the appearance gave correct information unknown previously to General Barter, namely, that Lieutenant B. grew stout and wore a beard before his death, also that he had owned a brown pony, with black mane and tail.  Even granting that the ghosts of the pony and lieutenant were present (both being dead), we are not informed that the grooms were dead also.  The hallucination, on the theory of “mental telegraphy,” was telegraphed to General Barter’s mind from some one who had seen Lieutenant B. ride home from mess not very sober, or from the mind of the defunct lieutenant, or, perhaps, from that of the deceased pony.  The message also reached and alarmed General Barter’s dogs.