“The road makes a long détour, and then comes back, several hundred feet lower down, to a spot almost directly underneath the point where the accident happened. A little way in from there the man saw the horse lying perfectly still, with its neck broken. Higher up the bank he found the woman, moaning a little, but quite unconscious, crushed and torn,—you have seen the place and you can guess. She only lived a few minutes.
“When at last the man awoke out of his stupor, to lift her up and carry her down to the path, he noticed that the bangle and the coin had both gone, wrenched off in that wild plunge through trees and stones into eternity—or oblivion.
“The man waited there, while one of the syces went for help and a litter, and it was only after they had carried her home that I saw him. I could hardly recognise him. There were times when I had thought him the saddest-looking man I had ever seen, but this was different. There was a grey, drawn setness on his face, and something in his eyes I did not care to look at. He and I were living in the same house, and in the evening he told me briefly what had happened, and several times, both while he spoke and afterwards, I saw him throw up his head and listen intently. I asked him what it was, and he said, ‘Nothing, I thought I heard something.’ Later, he started suddenly, and said—
“‘Did you hear that?’
“‘Hear what?’ I asked.
“‘A faint jingling noise,’ he replied. ‘You must have heard it; did you do it?’
“But I had heard nothing, and I said so.
“He got up and looked about to see if any one was moving, and then came back and sat down again. I tried to make him go to bed, but he would not, and I left him there at last.
“They buried her the next evening, and all the English in the station were there. The man and I stood on the outskirts of the people, and we lingered till they had gone, and then watched the grave-diggers finish the filling of the grave, put on the sods, and finally leave the place. As they built up the earth, and shaped it into the form of a roof to cover that narrow dwelling, the man winced under every blow of the spades, as though he were receiving them on his own body. There was nothing to say, and we said nothing, but more than once I noticed the man in that listening attitude, and I began to be alarmed about him. I got him home, and except for that look, which had not left his face, and the intentness with which I sometimes caught him listening, there was nothing strange in his manner; only he hardly spoke at all. On subsequent evenings for the next fortnight he talked more than usual about himself, and as I knew that he often spent a good deal of time in, or looking on to, the cemetery, I was not surprised to hear him say that he thought it a particularly attractive graveyard, and one where it would be pleasant to lie, if one had to be put away somewhere. It is on the hill, you know, by the church, and one can see the eternal snows across that blue valley which divides us from the highlands of Sikkim. He was insistent, and made me remark that, as far as he was concerned, there could be no better place to lie than in this God’s Acre.
“Once or twice, again, he asked me if I did not hear a jingle, and constantly, especially in the quiet of evening, I saw him start and listen, till sometimes I really began to think I heard the noise he described.