little time they will all be at my feet and yours, and I, oh, glory! will
be drugged or drunk all day long."

Dana Da knew his people.

When a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a little
squirming kitten on his breast, or puts his hand into his ulster pocket
and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be, or opens
his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his dress shirts, or goes for a
long ride with his mackintosh strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a
little sprawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or goes out to
dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or stays at home
and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or wriggling among his boots,
or hanging, head downward, in his tobacco jar, or being mangled by his
terrier in the veranda--when such a man finds one kitten, neither more nor
less, once a day in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be, he
is naturally upset. When he dare not murder his daily trove because he
believes it to be a manifestation, an emissary, an embodiment, and half a
dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature, he is more
than upset. He is actually distressed. Some of Lone Sahib's coreligionists
thought that he was a highly favored individual; but many said that if he
had treated the first kitten with proper respect--as suited a Toth-Ra
Tum-Sennacherib Embodiment--all his trouble would have been averted. They
compared him to the Ancient Mariner, but none the less they were proud of
him and proud of the Englishman who had sent the manifestation. They did
not call it a Sending because Icelandic magic was not in their programme.

After sixteen kittens--that is to say, after one fortnight, for there were
three kittens on the first day to impress the fact of the Sending, the
whole camp was uplifted by a letter--it came flying through a window--from