This I have endeavoured to do in as methodical a manner as possible, exaggerating nothing and suppressing nothing.
The reader has now the evidence before him, and can form his own opinions unaided by me as to the causes of the disappearance and death of Rufus Smith and of John Berthier Heatherstone, V.C., C.B.
There is only one point which is still dark to me.

Why the _chelas_ of Ghoolab Shah should have removed their victims to the desolate Hole of Cree instead of taking their lives at Cloomber, is, I confess, a mystery to me.
In dealing with occult laws, however, we must allow for our own complete ignorance of the subject.

Did we know more we might see that there was some analogy between that foul bog and the sacrilege which had been committed, and that their ritual and customs demanded that just such a death was the one appropriate to the crime.
On this point I should be sorry to be dogmatic, but at least we must allow that the Buddhist priests must have had some very good cause for the course of action which they so deliberately carried out.
Months afterwards I saw a short paragraph in the _Star of India_ announcing that three eminent Buddhists--Lal Hoomi, Mowdar Khan, and Ram Singh--had just returned in the steamship _Deccan_ from a short trip to Europe.

The very next item was devoted to an account of the life and services of Major-General Heatherstone, "who has lately disappeared from his country house in Wigtownshire, and who, there is too much reason to fear, has been drowned." I wonder if by chance there was any other human eye but mine which traced a connection between these paragraphs.

I never showed them to my wife or to Mordaunt, and they will only know of their existence when they read these pages.
I don't know that there is any other point which needs clearing up.