"'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----" "And went to sleep?" interrupted Mrs. Dearman. '"I _nevah_ sleep,'" quoted Mr. Ross-Ellison, "and I had no time, if any inclination. Scarcely indeed had I seated myself, and actually while I was placing my _topi_ on an adjacent stool, a lady emerged from a distant door at the end of the verandah and walked towards me. I can tell you I was mighty surprised, for not only was Captain Malet-Marsac a lone bachelor and a misogynist of blameless life, but the lady looked as though she had stepped straight out of an Early Victorian phonograph-album. She had on a crinoline sort of dress, a deep lace collar, spring-sidey sort of boots, mittens, and a huge cameo brooch. Also she had long ringlets. Her face is stamped on my memory and I could pick her out from a hundred women similarly dressed, or her picture from a hundred others...." "What did you do?" asked Mrs. Dearman, whose neglected ice-pudding was fast being submerged in a pink lake of its own creation. "Do? Nothing. I grabbed my _topi_, stood up, bowed--and looked silly." "And what did the lady do?"