“Not always,” said her partner.  “Now, will you, first, believe my word, and, secondly, find the explanation—­if I tell you a perfectly true ‘supernatural’ story?”

“I’ll certainly believe your word, Colonel, if you’re serious, and I’ll try and suggest an explanation if you like,” replied Mrs. Dearman.

“Same to me, Mrs. Dearman?” asked Mr. Ross-Ellison.  “I’ve had ‘experiences’ too—­and can tell you one of them.”

“Same to you, Mr. Ross-Ellison,” replied Mrs. Dearman, and added:  “But why only one of them?”

Mr. Ross-Ellison smiled, glanced round the luxuriously appointed table and the company of fair women and brave men—­and thought of a far-distant and little-known place called Mekran Kot and of a phantom cavalry corps that haunted a valley in its vicinity.

“Only one worth telling,” said he.

“Well,—­first case,” began Colonel Jackson, “I was once driving past a cottage on my way home from College (in Ireland), and I saw the old lady who lived in that cottage come out of the door, cross her bit of garden, go through a gate, scuttle over the railway-line and enter a fenced field that had belonged to her husband, and which she (and a good many other people) believed rightly belonged to her.

“’There goes old Biddy Maloney pottering about in that plot of ground again,’ thinks I.  ‘She’s got it on the brain since her law-suit.’  I knew it was Biddy, of course, not only because of her coming out of Biddy’s house, but because it was Biddy’s figure, walk, crutch-stick, and patched old cloak.  When I got home I happened to say to Mother:  ’I saw poor old Biddy Maloney doddering round that wretched field as I came along’.

“‘What?’ said my mother, ’why, your father was called to her, as she was dying, hours ago, and she’s not been out of her bed for weeks.’  When my father came in, I learned that Biddy was dead an hour before I saw her—­before I left the railway station in fact!  What do you make of that?  Is there any ’explanation’?”

“Some other old lady,” suggested Mrs. Dearman.

“No.  There was nobody else in those parts mistakable for Biddy Maloney, and no other old woman was in or near the house while my father was there.  We sifted the matter carefully.  It was Biddy Maloney and no one else.”

“Auto-suggestion.  Visualization on the retina of an idea in the mind.  Optical illusion,” hazarded Mrs. Dearman.

“No good.  I hadn’t realized I was approaching Biddy Maloney’s cottage until I saw her coming out of it and I certainly hadn’t thought of Biddy Maloney until my eye fell upon her.  And it’s a funny optical illusion that deceives one into seeing an old lady opening gates, crossing railways and limping away into fenced fields.”

“H’m!  What was the other case?” asked Mrs. Dearman, turning to Mr. Ross-Ellison.

“That happened here in India at a station called Duri, away in the Northern Presidency, where I was then—­er—­living for a time.  On the day after my arrival I went to call on Malet-Marsac to whom I had letters of introduction—­political business—­and, as he was out, but certain to return in a minute or two from Parade, I sat me down in a comfortable chair in the verandah——­”