tell you as much as I like; you will get nothing out of me if you
interrupt--yes, I passed a comfortable night. She was in that room for a
long time, telling me lots of things. The next morning my mother
enquired with whom I was talking and I told her a lie. I said I was
reading my novel aloud. They all know it at home now. She comes and
passes two nights with me in the week when I am at home. She does not
come to Calcutta. She talks about various matters and she is
happy--don't ask me how I know that. I shall not tell you whether I have
touched her body because that will give rise to further questions.

"Everybody at home has seen her, and they all know what I have told you,
but nobody has spoken to her. They all respect and love her--nobody is
afraid. In fact she never comes except on Saturday and Sunday evenings
and that when I am at home."

No amount of cross-examination, coaxing or inducement made my friend
Haralal say anything further.

This story in itself would not probably have been believed; but after
the incident of "His dead wife's picture" nobody disbelieved it, and
there is no reason why anybody should. Haralal is not a man who would
tell yarns, and then I have made enquiries at Haralal's village where
several persons know this much; that his dead wife pays him a visit
twice every week.

Now that Haralal is 500 miles from his village home I do not know how
things stand; but I am told that this story reached the ears of the
_Bara Saheb_ and he asked Haralal if he would object to a transfer and
Haralal told him that he would not.