CHAPTER X.
THE MAHATMA TRIES THREATS.
“Be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense!”—“Macbeth.”
“Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves.”—“Much Ado About Nothing.”
While the Mahatma was thus stealthily undermining the president, he was also busy strengthening his own outworks. In December one of the doubting ones, the Mr. Keightley who had been making up his mind whether to believe his own eyes ever since June, 1890, received in India a letter from Mr. Judge fortifying him against the heterodox influences to which he would be exposed on Colonel Olcott’s return to that country.
THE “FOLLOW JUDGE AND STICK” MISSIVE.
Mr. Judge warned his “dear Bert” that Olcott would try to shake his faith in the genuineness of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma-missives; that he might even have the baseness to suggest that they were fabricated by Mr. Judge himself. On opening this letter, Mr. Keightley found a small slip of peculiar paper, which turned out (on a prosaic scrutiny) to be the sort of tissue which is used to separate the sheets of typewriting transfer paper. On this slip appeared in Mahatmic script the words:—
Judge leads right. Follow him and stick!
There was, however, no seal impression. The Mahatma had grown chary of using that seal. From the material of this missive we gather that the Mahatma is not so remote from typewriters as one would
