ould be found on the ground. This is not the
first occasion that such beings are found to visit this house and it is
heard from a reliable source that long ago a woman committed suicide by
hanging and it is believed that her spirit loiters round the building.
As these incidents have made a deep impression upon the members, they
have decided to remove the Club from the said buildings."

THE OPEN DOOR.

Here again is something that is very peculiar and not very uncommon.

* * * * *

We, myself and three other friends of mine, were asked by another friend
of ours to pass a week's holiday at the suburban residence of the last
named. We took an evening train after the office hours and reached our
destination at about 10-30 at night. The place was about 60 miles from
Calcutta.

Our host had a very large house with a number of disused wings. I do not
think many of my readers have any idea of a large residential house in
Bengal. Generally it is a quadrangular sort of thing with a big yard in
the centre which is called the "Angan" or "uthan" (a court-yard). On all
sides of the court-yard are rooms of all sorts of shapes and sizes.
There are generally two stories--the lower used as kitchen, godown,
store-room, etc., and the upper as bed-rooms, etc.

[Illustration: ABCDE is the shady foot-path from the lake to the front
of the house. * is the open door.]

Now this particular house of our friend was of the kind described above.
It stood on extensive grounds wooded with fruit and timber trees.
There was also a big tank, a miniature lake in fact, which was the
property of my friend. There was good fishing in the lake and that was
the particular attraction that had drawn my other friends to this place.
I myself was not very fond of angling.

As I have said we reached this place at about 10-30 at night. We were
received very kindly by the father and the mother of our host who were a
very jolly old couple; and after a very late supper, or, shall I call it
dinner, we retired. The guest rooms were well furnished and very
comfortable. It was a bright moonlight night and our plan was to get up
at 4 in the morning and go to the lake for angling.

At three in the morning the servants of our host woke us up (they had
come to carry our fishing gear) and we went to the lake which was a
couple of hundred yards from the house. As I have said it was a bright
moonlight night in summer and the outing w