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.

When the stated day dawned, the shower of kittens began. Some were white
and some were tabby, and all were about the same loathsome age. Three were
on his hearthrug, three in his bathroom, and the other six turned up at
intervals among the visitors who came to see the prophecy break down.
Never was a more satisfactory Sending. On the next day there were no
kittens, and the next day and all the other days were kittenless and
quiet. The people murmured and looked to the Old Man of the Mountains for
an explanation. A letter, written on a palm leaf, dropped from the
ceiling, but everyone except Lone Sahib felt that letters were not what
the occasion demanded. There should have been cats, there should have been