ughout--save that he
would not dismount.

Once, as the troop rode in column of sections, I fell to the rear and,
coming up behind, struck with all my might at that slightly nebulous
figure, with its faint vagueness of outline and hint of transparency.

My heavy cutting-whip whistled--and touched nothing. I was as one who
beats the air. Section Six must have thought me mad.... Twice again the
dead man drilled with the living, and each time I described what
happened to Major Jackson.

"It is a persistent hallucination," said he; "you must go on leave."

"I won't run from Burker, nor from a hallucination," I replied.

Then came the end.

At the next drill, twenty-one gentlemen were present and Number
Twenty-one, the Sessions Judge of Duri, a Scot, kept staring with looks
of amazement and alarm at Burker, who rode as Number Four on his flank,
making an odd file into a skeleton section. I was certain that he saw
Burker.

As the gentlemen "dismissed" after parade, the Judge rode up to me and,
with a white face, demanded:--

"Who the devil was that rode with me as Number Twenty-four? It was--it
was--like--Sergeant Burker."

"It _was_ Sergeant Burker, Sir," said I.

"I knew it was," he replied, and added: "Man, you and I are fey."

"Will you tell Major Jackson of this, Sir?" I begged. "He knows I have
seen Burker's ghost here before, and tells me it is a hallucination."

"I'll go and see him now." he replied. "He is an old friend of mine,
and--he's a damned good doctor. Man--you and I are fey." He rode to
where his trap, with its spirited cob, was awaiting him, dismounted and
drove off.

As everybody knows, Mr. Blake of the Indian Civil Service, Sessions
Judge of Duri, was thrown from his trap and killed. It happened five
minutes after he had said to me, with a queer look in his eyes, and a
queer note in his voice, "Man! you and I are fey".... So it is no
hallucination and I am haunted by Burker's ghost. Very good. I will
fight Burker on his own ground.

My ghost shall haunt Burker's ghost--or I shall be at peace.

Though the religion of the Chaplain has failed me, the religion of my
Mother, taught to me at her knee, has implanted in me an ineradicable
belief in the ultimate justice of things, and the unquenchable hope of
"somehow good".

I am about to go before my Maker or to obliteration and oblivion. If the
former, I am prepared to say to Him: "You made me a man. I have played
the man. I look to you for