omething moving about on the hearthrug, outside the circle of light from
his reading lamp. When the thing began to myowl, he realized that it was a
kitten--a wee white kitten, nearly blind and very miserable. He was
seriously angry, and spoke bitterly to his bearer, who said that there was
no kitten in the room when he brought in the lamp, and real kittens of
tender age generally had mother cats in attendance.

"If the Presence will go out into the veranda and listen," said the
bearer, "he will hear no cats. How, therefore, can the kitten on the bed
and the kitten on the hearthrug be real kittens?"

Lone Sahib went out to listen, and the bearer followed him, but there was
no sound of Rachel mewing for her children. He returned to his room,
having hurled the kitten down the hillside, and wrote out the incidents of
the day for the benefit of his coreligionists. Those people were so
absolutely free from superstition that they ascribed anything a little out
of the common to agencies. As it was their business to know all about the
agencies, they were on terms of almost indecent familiarity with
manifestations of every kind. Their letters dropped from the
ceiling--unstamped--and spirits used to squatter up and down their
staircases all night. But they had never come into contact with kittens.
Lone Sahib wrote out the facts, noting the hour and the minute, as every
psychical observer is bound to do, and appending the Englishman's letter
because it was the most mysterious document and might have had a bearing
upon anything in this world or the next. An outsider would have
translated all the tangle thus: "Look out! You laughed at me once, and now
I am going to make you sit up."

Lone Sahib's coreligionists found that meaning in it; but their
translation was refined and full of four-syllable words. They held a
sederunt, and were filled with tremulous joy, for, in spite of their
familiarity with all the other worlds and cycles, they had a very human
awe of things sent from ghostland. They met in Lone Sahib's room in
shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by a
clinking among the photo frames on the mantelpiece. A wee white kitten,
nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the
candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the
manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of
purpose, but it was a manifestation of undoubted authenticity.