They will see that you are
speaking the truth."
He departed unsteadily, with the promise of some more rupees if anything
came of the Sending.
The Englishman sent a letter to Lone Sahib, couched in what he remembered
of the terminology of the creed. He wrote: "I also, in the days of what
you held to be my backsliding, have obtained enlightenment, and with
enlightenment has come power." Then he grew so deeply mysterious that the
recipient of the letter could make neither head nor tail of it, and was
proportionately impressed; for he fancied that his friend had become a
"fifth rounder." When a man is a "fifth rounder" he can do more than Slade
and Houdin combined.
Lone Sahib read the letter in five different fashions, and was beginning a
sixth interpretation, when his bearer dashed in with the news that there
was a cat on the bed. Now, if there was one thing that Lone Sahib hated
more than another it was a cat. He rated the bearer for not turning it out
of the house. The bearer said that he was afraid. All the doors of the
bedroom had been shut throughout the morning, and no real cat could
possibly have entered the room. He would prefer not to meddle with the
creature.
Lone Sahib entered the room gingerly, and there, on the pillow of his bed,
sprawled and whimpered a wee white kitten, not a jumpsome, frisky little
beast, but a sluglike crawler with its eyes barely opened and its paws
lacking strength or direction--a kitten that ought to have been in a
basket with its mamma.
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