Therefore we still believe you to be an honest man, as your dealings have proved for many years.

As an honest man, therefore, we beg you to give us a true answer to a plain question.

Was the Shape we saw before us just now a woman or a spirit, and if a spirit, was it the ghost of Mameena, the beautiful witch who died near this place nearly the quarter of a hundred years ago, she whom you loved, or who loved you, which is just the same thing, since a man always loves a woman who loves him, or thinks that he does ?" Now after reflection I replied in these words and as conscientiously as I could-- "King and Councillors, I do not know if what we all saw was a ghost or a living person, but, as I do not believe in ghosts, or at any rate that they come back to the world on such errands, I conclude that it was a living person.

Still it may have been neither, but only a mere picture produced before us by the arts of Zikali.

So much for the first question.