Menzi smiled at her and lifted his hands again. Lo! the fire that seemed
to be dead leapt up after them in a fierce blaze. Again he dropped his
hands and the fire died away. Then he moved his arms to and fro and it
came back, following the motions of his arms as though he drew it by a
string.

"Have you thought, White Teacher? Have you thought?" he asked. "Good!
Arise, smoke!"

Behold, instead of the clear flame appeared a fan-shaped column of dense
white smoke, behind which Menzi vanished, all except his outstretched
hands.

"Look on to the smoke, White people, and do you, Little Flower, tell me
what you see there," he called from behind this vaporous veil.

Tabitha stared, they all stared. Then she cried out:

"I see a room, I see an old man in a clergyman's coat reading a letter.
Why, it is the Dean whom we used to know in Natal. There's the wart on
his nose and the tuft of hair that hangs down over his eye, and he's
reading a letter written by Father. I know the writing. It begins, 'My
dear Dean, Providence has appointed me to a strange place'----"

"Is that what you see also, Teacher?" asked Menzi. "And if so, is it
what you pictured in your thought?"

Thomas turned away and uttered something like a groan, for indeed he
had thought of the Dean and of the letter he had written to him a month