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not even discoverable when the ground was searched shottly afterwards with a 

 view to that hypothesis. But the truth is that the theory of previous burial is 

 morally untenable in view of tln fact that the demand for the cup and saucer — 

 of all the myriad things that might haven been asked for — could never have 

 been foressen. It arose out of circumstances theraselves the sport of the moment. 

 If no extra person had joined us .at the last moment the number of cups and 

 saucers packed up by the servants would havj been sufficient for our needs, and 

 no attention would have been drawn to them It was by the servants, without 

 the knowledge of any guests, that the cup; taken were chosen from others that 

 might just as easily have betn taken. Had the burial fraud been really perpe 

 trated, it would have been necessary to constiain us to choose the exact spot we 

 did actually choose for the picnic with a view to the previous preparations, but 

 ihe exact spot on which the ladies jampans were deposited was chosen by myself 

 in concert with the gentleman referred to above as X . . and it was within a 

 few yards of this spot that the cup was found. Thus, leaving the other absur- 

 dities of the fraud hypothesis out of sight, who could be the agents employed 

 to deposit the cup and saucer in the ground. and when did they perform the 

 Operation? Madame Blavatsky was under our roof the whole time from the pre- 

 vious evening when the picnic was determined on to the moment of starting. 

 The one personal servant she had with her. a Bombay boy and a perfect stranger 

 to Simla, was constantly about the house the previous evening, and from the first 

 awakening of the household in the morning — and as it happened he spoke to 

 my own bearer in the middle of the night, for I had been annoyed by a loft 

 door which had been left unfastened, and was slamming in the wind, and called 

 up servants to shut it. Madame Blavatsky it appears, thus awakened, had sent 

 her servant, who always slept within call, to inquire what was the matter. Colonel 

 Olcott, the President of the Theosophical Society, also a guest of ours at the 

 time of which I am speaking, was certainly with us all the evening from the 

 period of our return from the abortive expedition of the afternoon, and was also 

 present at the Start. To imagine that he spent the night in going four or five 

 miles down a difhcult khud through forest paths difficult to find, to bury a cup 

 and saucer of a kind that we were not likely to take in a place we were not 

 likely to go to, in order that in the exceedingly remote contingency of its being 

 required for the perpetration of a hoax it might be there, would certainly be a 

 somewhat extravagant conjecture. Another consideration — the destination for 

 which we were making can be approached by two roads from opposite ends of 

 the upper horseshoe of hüls on which Simla Stands. It was open to us to select 

 either path, and certainly neither Madame Blavatsky nor Colonel Olcott had any 

 share in the selection of that actually taken. Had we taken the other, we should 

 never have come to the spot where we actually picniced. The hypothesis of fraud 



