much less project an army of kittens through space.  The entire arrangement, said the letter, was strictly orthodox, worked and sanctioned by the highest authorities within the pale of the creed.  There was great joy at this, for some of the weaker brethren seeing that an outsider who had been working on independent lines could create kittens, whereas their own rulers had never gone beyond crockery—­and broken at that—­were showing a desire to break line on their own trail.  In fact, there was the promise of a schism.  A second round robin was drafted to the Englishman, beginning:  “Oh, Scoffer,” and ending with a selection of curses from the rites of Mizraim and Memphis and the Commination of Jugana; who was a “fifth rounder,” upon whose name an upstart “third rounder” once traded.  A papal excommunication is a billet-doux compared to the Commination of Jugana.  The Englishman had been proved under the hand and seal of the Old Man of the Mountains to have appropriated virtue and pretended to have power which, in reality, belonged only to the supreme head.  Naturally the round robin did not spare him.

He handed the letter to Dana Da to translate into decent English.  The effect on Dana Da was curious.  At first he was furiously angry, and then he laughed for five minutes.

“I had thought,” he said, “that they would have come to me.  In another week I would have shown that I sent the Sending, and they would have discrowned the Old Man of the Mountains who has sent this Sending of mine.  Do you do nothing.  The time has come for me to act.  Write as I dictate, and I will put them to shame.  But give me ten more rupees.”

At Dana Da’s dictation the Englishman wrote nothing less than a formal challenge to the Old Man of the Mountains.  It wound up:  “And if this manifestation be from your hand, then let it go forward; but if it be from my hand, I will that the Sending shall cease in two days’ time.  On that day there shall be twelve kittens and thenceforward none at all.  The people shall judge between us.”  This was signed by Dana Da, who added pentacles and pentagrams, and a crux ansata, and half a dozen swastikas, and a Triple Tau to his name, just to show that he was all he laid claim to be.

The challenge was read out to the gentlemen and ladies, and they remembered then that Dana Da had laughed at them some years ago.  It was officially announced that the Old Man of the Mountains would treat the matter with contempt; Dana Da being an independent investigator without a single “round” at the back of him.  But this did not soothe his people.  They wanted to see a fight.  They were very human for all their spirituality.  Lone Sahib, who was really being worn out with kittens, submitted meekly to his fate.  He felt that he was being “kittened to prove the power of Dana Da,” as the poet says.