I have seen, not once
but repeatedly, not by moonlight in a churchyard, but under the
Indian sun on a parade-ground, the ghost of a man _and of all his
accoutrements,--of a rifle, of a horse and all a horse's trappings_.

I have been a teetotaller for years, I have never had sunstroke and I am
as absolutely sane as ever a man was.

And further I am in no sense remorseful, repentant, or "dogged by the
spectre of an evil deed".

I killed Burker intentionally. Were he alive again I would kill him
again. I punished him myself because the law could not punish him as he
deserved, and I in no way regret or deplore my just and judicial action.
There are deeds a gentleman must resent and punish--with the extreme
penalty. No, it is in no sense a case of the self-tormented wretch
driven mad by the awful hallucinations of his guilty, unhinged mind. I
am no haunted murderer pursued by phantoms and illusions, believing
himself always in the presence of his victim's ghost.

All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible
fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the
way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that
"murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his
own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and
terrible hallucination.

My case is in no wise parallel.

I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or
terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. Exactly how and why
I killed him, and how and why I am about to kill myself, I will now set
forth, without the slightest exaggeration, special pleading or any other
deviation from the truth....

I am to my certain knowledge the eighth consecutive member of my family,
in the direct line, to follow the profession of arms, but am the first
to do so without bearing a commission. My father died young in the rank
of Captain, my grandfather led his own regiment in the Crimea, my
great-grandfather was a Lieutenant-General, and, if I told you my real
name, you could probably state something that he did at Waterloo.

I went to Sandhurst and I was expelled from Sandhurst--very rightly and
justly--for an offence, or rather the culminating offence of a series of
offences, that were everything but mean, dishonest or underhand. I was
wild, hasty, undisciplined and I was lost for want of a father to thrash
me as a boy, and by possession of a most loving