The Mahatma and the Hare | Page 9

Smithers," I replied; "but how about the window-cleaner
who went to jail and lost his situation?"
Then she passed on or was drawn away without making any answer.
Now comes the odd part of the story. When I woke up on the following
morning in my rooms, it was to be informed by the frightened maid-of-
all-work that Mrs. Smithers had been found dead in her bed. Moreover,
a few days later I learned from a lawyer that she had made a will
leaving me everything she possessed, including the lease of her house
and nearly £1000, for she had been a saving old person during all her
long life.
Well, I sought out that window-cleaner and compensated him
handsomely, saying that I had found I was mistaken in the evidence I
gave against him. The rest of the property I kept, and I hope that it was
not wrong of me to do so. It will be remembered that some of it was
already my own, temporarily diverted into another channel, and for the
rest I have so many to help. To be frank I do not spend much upon
myself.

THE HARE
Now I have done with myself, or rather with my own insignificant
present history, and come to that of the Hare. It impressed me a good
deal at the time, which is not long ago, so much indeed that I
communicated the facts to Jorsen. He ordered me to publish them, and
what Jorsen orders must be done. I don't know why this should be, but
it is so. He has authority of a sort that I am unable to define.
One night after the usual aspirations and concentration of mind, which
by the way are not always successful, I passed into what occultists call
spirit, and others a state of dream. At any rate I found myself upon the
borders of the Great White Road, as near to the mighty Gates as I am
ever allowed to come. How far that may be away I cannot tell. Perhaps
it is but a few yards and perhaps it is the width of this great world, for
in that place which my spirit visits time and distance do not exist. There

all things are new and strange, not to be reckoned by our measures.
There the sight is not our sight nor the hearing our hearing. I repeat that
all things are different, but that difference I cannot describe, and if I
could it would prove past comprehension.
There I sat by the borders of the Great White Road, my eyes fixed upon
the Gates above which the towers mount for miles on miles, outlined
against an encircling gloom with the radiance of the world beyond the
worlds. Four-square they stand, those towers, and fourfold the gates
that open to the denizens of other earths. But of these I have no
knowledge beyond the fact that it is so in my visions.
I sat upon the borders of the Road, my eyes fixed in hope upon the
Gates, though well I knew that the hope would never be fulfilled, and
watched the dead go by.
They were many that night. Some plague was working in the East and
unchaining thousands. The folk that it loosed were strange to me who
in this particular life have seldom left England, and I studied them with
curiosity; high-featured, dark-hued people with a patient air. The
knowledge which I have told me that one and all they were very ancient
souls who often and often had walked this Road before, and therefore,
although as yet they did not know it, were well accustomed to the
journey. No, I am wrong, for here and there an individual did know.
Indeed one deep-eyed, wistful little woman, who carried a baby in her
arms, stopped for a moment and spoke to me.
"The others cannot see you as I do," she said. "Priest of the Queen of
queens, I know you well; hand in hand we climbed by the seven
stairways to the altars of the moon."
"Who is the Queen of queens?" I asked.
"Have you forgotten her of the hundred names whose veils we lifted
one by one; her whose breast was beauty and whose eyes were truth? In
a day to come you will remember. Farewell till we walk this Road no
more."
"Stay--when did we meet?"
"When our souls were young," she answered, and faded from my ken
like a shadow from the sea.
After the Easterns came many others from all parts of the earth. Then
suddenly appeared a company of about six hundred folk of every age
and English in their looks. They were not so calm as are the majority of

those who make this journey. When I