It did not strike me as curious that this Mahatma should have read my thoughts, neither did it occur to me to wonder how he knew that I was animadverting upon the delights of the twopenny 'bus. However, his remark narrowed my field of selection, and I thought on as intensely as I could. I crossed the seas and flew, in spirit, to Finland, to a lovely island in the midst of a beautiful river--the Voksa--teeming with trout, great and small, and with silver grayling; and then I thought of Ostramanch, the home of the capercailzie, of the blackcock; the scene of a hundred and one superb days with the gun, and of as many nights spent in the perfect happiness of solitude and observation beneath the tall pines and the bright stars of the northern sky, in the hush and the solemn majesty of the darkness and silence. And I had almost cried, "Give me Ostramanch!" when I remembered that this dearly loved spot would not, after all, do. It had passed from English into Russian hands, and my spiritual self could never be really happy there under such circumstances. What if my essence were suddenly to happen upon a Russian sportsman taking a family shot at a young covey of blackgame or willow-grouse, huddled together upon a sand-dune, or hiding behind a tuft of purple-fruited bilberry? Could my spiritual voice cry out upon such a deed, or my spiritual fingers close upon the throat of the delinquent, or my phantasmal toe perform a corporeal function? Could I even spread bony arms before his eyes and play the common vulgar ghost upon him, to punish him withal? Alas! I thought, no. Ostramanch will not do. And then, at last, the picture of Erinofka rose before my eyes, and I knew that I had found my Fate. I pictured myself strolling year-long over the purple moors, through the dark belts of forest, by bog and morass and snipe-haunted waste. I remembered many trudges--days of delight--in those same woods, gun-laden, full of ardour, unwearied by day-long tramping, oblivious of hunger, impatient of oncoming darkness; and I imagined myself repeating such delightful experiences _ad infinitum_, and laughed aloud in the joy of my foolish dream-heart. The Mahatmas immediately interfered; they flashed their great eyes and fluttered their long black mantles at me, and cried: "No guns, no guns!" "And no fishing-rods!" added one of them. "What! no guns and no rod?" I said, growing grave very suddenly. To be at Erinofka and never to hear the popping of another cartridge seemed a dreadful prospect. "Oh, you can carry a gun if you please," said the presiding Mahatma, who was growing strangely like a London police magistrate, "but you must use smokeless and noiseless powder, and no shot." "And a rod without a reel," said another Mahatma. "And a line without a hook," added a third. "And see that you have a license," put in a fourth. "But, sirs," I began, "what am I to do with myself, if I may not----"