from Brest to invade Ireland. This time the force which he accompanied only numbered three thousand men, The expedition reached Lough Swilly only on the 10th of October: again the winds were England's faithful allies. Before the soldiers could be landed the flotilla was attacked by a British fleet under Admiral Borlase. It resisted for four hours. The French General wished Tone to escape in a very swift schooner, La Biche; but he refused to do so. On the surrender of the French he was landed among the other prisoners, recognised, taken to Dublin, tried by courtmartial, and sentenced to be hanged as a traitor. All that Tone claimed was to be shot as a soldier. This was refused. In the hope of delaying his execution at any rate, Curran applied to the head of the family from which Tone took the name of Wolfe Lord Kilwarden, the Lord Chief Justice - for a habeas corpus, on the ground that as the King's courts were open, trial by court-martial was illegal. The court granted the writ, the military refused to obey it; the court ordered their arrest for contempt, and so matters stood when it was announced that Tone, to escape what he regarded as a shameful death, had out his throat in prison. On the 19th of November he died. And so perished, in his thirty-sixth year, the man who, without family, fortune, position, or authority, contrived to place the British Empire in imminent and deadly jeopardy than ever did the great Napoleon. IN THE SHADOW OF THE FIG-TREE. How does it feel to meet a trees meet overhead in a dense skeleton in a lonely moonlit forest-path, to chat, and eventually walk home together in the most friendly way? Such a question might seem the prelude to a sensational ghost-story, yet an adventure of the kind actually happened to myself, and it was startling enough at the moment. Even now the remembrance of the grim thing as I saw it in the gloom of an Indian fig-tree, sitting between the moonlight and the black of a tropical night, the thrill of watching it rise to its fleshless feet, and the awe of standing face to face, and of knowing that there was not within many miles another human being to witness so strange a meeting, rise very vividly to my mind. I had been out all day in a distant part of the tea estates under my care in a lonely distriot of Madras, and started to walk home to camp in the forest just as darkness was coming on. That is always a brief season in the East. No sooner is the great red sun down behind the hills than the orimson flush in the sky pales to lavender and purple, the stars come out, and the hush of approaching night quickly falls upon everything. If darkness follows twilight so quickly in the open, it is even more rapid in the forest, where the branches of the canopy unbroken for miles at a time. My path lay through such a traot of woodland that evening, and hardly had I set out upon it when the last rays of the sun went off the topmost leaves, a soft mist began to rise from the ground, and every object faded quickly into the gathering gloom. Fortunately I knew the trail very well, and a full moon, which was getting up, would soon help to make the way easier. I was wearing the ordinary flannel clothing of a sahib in the hot weather, and had nothing with me but a white umbrella, for, though the distriet was full of wild beasts of all kinds, one gets out of the way of thinking much about them in India. So I strede light-heartedly along for the first two or three miles, meditating more on supper than anything else, the while I listened to the occasional hooting of an owl or the ory of a sleepy monkey awakened by bad dreams somewhere away in the tops of the distant thickets. It was certainly very lonely, and I was now in the most solitary part of the walk, about midway between my starting-point and the still distant camp. No human being existed in these deserted back-lands, and their stillness in the hush of the night-time was overwhelming. The moon, however, was presently up, shining in tropical splendour overhead, and I was glad of it, for the narrow path had been difficult to keep in the darkness. A few minutes more walking and the trees became scattered as an open space was reached, the moonshine began to come down in patches, and I felt cooler air as a welcome change to the humid stillness of the jungle behind. In front lay a stretch of bare rocky ground, silver in the shine from above, ending abruptly two hundred yards beyond in the shadows of a giant fig-tree, under whose boughs the track passed. To the vampire bats, flitting here and there like bad spirits in that oasis of light, I must have looked a brilliant object in my white flannels as I crossed in the full glare of the moonshine; but though they flapped round my head so close that I could feel the draught of their leathery wings, I pushed on and into the darkness beyond. There all was bare ground, since nothing would grow in such deep shade, and the many descending branches of the tree gave the impression of the cloisters of a church. Looking at the main trunk for a minute, I was surprised to see something sitting up against it with its back to the bark and quite motionless. And when I had had another stare, I W&8 still more surprised to see see that that thing was the skeleton of a man! Its skull was sunk upon its ehest-bone, its hands were by its sides, its legs straight out in front; a long bamboo staff lay close te the knees, and nothing clothed the grim anatomy of the bones but the usual loin-eloth worn by natives, "The thing" was not more than thirty yards away, and it was undoubtedly startling to come upon it so suddenly. But I had seen many dead men in strange places, and this poor wretch had doubtless been robbed and murdered, or had lost his way and died of starvation there, just as he sat. By this time my eyes were getting more accustomed to the darkness again, and I went a few paces nearer to look at that dreadful object. It was now only a dozen strides from me, and I could see every rib and bone, every joint and angle, of the dead man's framework. Think, therefore, with what a start of incredulous surprise I jumped a pace backwards when, as I looked, the figure slowly and deliberately drew its knees up to its ehin, and still more slowly lifted its head! It was impossible; the shifting moonlight on the black floor of the forest must have confused me: & man dead for months, his bones picked clean by crows and hill-foxes, to move his legs about like that,-it was not to be thought of! I frowned at my own foolishness, and looked again. I looked and looked, and there under my very eyes the skeleton was getting upon its feet. There was no possibility of mistake now. It was getting on to its feet laboriously but steadily, and in another minute was us on his way to the open glen behind. The skeleton stopped as I bid it, but not for a moment had I supposed it would really answer my question. It was therefore with a renewed thrill that I saw its jaws begin to move-the thing was about to speak, and I awaited with amazed curiosity to know what the being would say. up and standing erect, the fleshless white framework of a man outlined vividly against the black of the big tree-trunk and the murk of the jungle beyond. Then he turned full to me, and though my heart beat a little, as I suppose any one's would have done under the circumstances, I turned on him likewise to see it out. For several minutes, though it seemed much longer, we stood face to face across the narrow strip of jungle path, I oudgelling my brains to find some reasonable explanation of a thing so impossible, and the figure apparently taking steek of me with uncomfortable intentness. Then he came a step forward, and it must be confessed I should have very much liked to go one backwards. But that would have been useless, even if retreating had been to my fanoy, So I tightened my grip on my umbrella-handle, and stood my ground resolutely. With a slow shuffling walk the thing came towards me until it was only a few paces away, and that seemed quite near enough. "Stop," I said, holding up my hand-" stop, and say who you are and what you want." My voice sounded unnatural in the deep stillness of the woodlands, and it disturbed a little brown owl in the branches overhead. He dropped from his perch, and with a ghostly hoot swept, shadow-like, between "Then, from those cavernous eyes, Gleam in December; From the heart's chamber." 8 And now, with & deep salaam, both hands pressed to its forehead, the dweller in the shadows bowed low and mumbled in Hindustani— "Protector of the poor, help of the friendless, will the sahib deign to let me bask in his radiance?" A civil skeleton at all events, I thought to myself, and as there was obviously more to come I nodded and said, "How can I help you, friend?" Then, to my surprise, with another low bow the figure asked for food and money. What a quaint idea! why, food would be useless to such a cavernous interior; and as for moneya coin for Charon would be the utmost such a being might want. But the figure was obviously serious, and looking closely at him all on a sudden the truth began to dawn on me. "Stand there in that patch of light," I said, and after a moment's hesitation until your munificence came the thing moved obediently shining down the path," he into a pool of moonlight on answered. the ground. There he stood with his hands crossed on his breast, and I went up and examined him carefully. He made a fine show gleaming there in the dazzle, which brought up his adornments in vivid white while everything else was in inky blackness; but the secret was outhe was a real man of flesh and blood, a wandering fakir, or begging devotee, who by way of expressing his sanetity had painted, with clay and wood ashes, an exact counterpart of every joint and bone of his anatomy on his dusky exterior, The work was excellently done, and as his natural shape was quite invisible in the dusk of the trees, I had been completely deceived. "Why," I said, "brother, you are solid man after all. I thought you must be when you said you were hungry. But what 8 way to get yourself up you might have frightened somebody!" "Not the sahib," he replied politely"night and day, good spirits and bad are alike to the sahib." "Hum!" I said, "that is as it may be. How long have you been sitting here alone in the gloom?" "A day or two, sahib." "Good heavens and what have you eaten, and what have you been doing all that time?" "Fakir," I said, "I respect your abstinence greatly, and fear you get through more thinking in a week-end than I in a year. Nevertheless it would be a pity to turn that interesting diagram on your skin into actual fact, so you had better come to the tents and have some food. If you will get behind me-not too close-you can follow down to the camp and have a bed in the stables, and as much food as you can eat." The fakir was delighted, and we strede away, a queer-looking couple, conversing as we went, until suddenly through the distant tree-stems there came the warm gleam of fire-lights and those odours of burning cowdung and cooking rice which are inevitable where natives are camped. But When eventually we reached those hospitable red beacons my dogs knew of my coming first, and poured out in a tumultuous pack to welcome the returning master. his companion was more than some of them could stand. The timid ones fairly fled at a sight of the weird figure behind, while the mere courageous, after a start of surprise, with bristling hair and showing teeth, manifested their disgust unmistakably. Even my butler-wallab, whe followed at their heels, staggered back for a moment to see me saunter into the firelight with a cheerful skeleton carrying my umbrella snugly |