APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/kipling/kim/CHAP_1_7

Text File | 1994-08-31 | 251.0 KB | 5,700 lines

                                    1901

                                    KIM

                             by Rudyard Kipling

                                     1

                  "Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way
                   By Tophet-flare to Judgement Day,
                   Be gentle when the heathen pray
                     To Buddha at Kamakura!"

He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun
Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher- the
Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold
Zam-Zammah, that "fire-breathing dragon," hold the Punjab, for the
great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.

There was some justification for Kim- he had kicked Lala
Dinanath's boy off the trunnions- since the English held the Punjab
and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any native;
though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in
a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect
equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white- a poor white
of the very poorest. The half-caste woman who looked after him (she
smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by
the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she
was Kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a
colonels family and had married Kimball O'Hara, a young
colour-sergeant the Mavericks, an Irish regiment. He afterwards took a
post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi railway, and his regiment went
home without him. The wife died of cholera in Ferozepore, and O'Hara
fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with the keen-eyed
three-year-old baby. Societies and chaplains, anxious for the child,
tried to catch him, but O'Hara drifted away, till he came across the
woman who took opium and learned the taste from her, and died as
poor whites die in India. His estate at death consisted of three
papers- one he called his "ne varietur" because those words were
written below his signature thereon, and another his
"clearance-certificate." The third was Kim's birth-certificate.
Those things, he was used to say, in his glorious opium-hours, would
yet make little Kimball a man. On no account was Kim to part with
them, for they belonged to a great piece of magic- such magic as men
practised over yonder behind the Museum, in the big blue and white
Jadoo-Gher- the Magic House, as we name the Masonic Lodge. It would,
he said, all come right some day, and Kim's horn would be exalted
between pillars- montrous pillars- of beauty and strength. The Colonel
himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the finest regiment in
the world, would attend to Kim- little Kim that should have been
better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils, whose god
was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim, if they had
not forgotten O'Hara- poor O'Hara that was gangforeman on the
Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush
chair on the veranda. So it came about after his death that the
woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leather
amulet-case which she strung round Kim's neck.

"And some day," she said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's
prophecies, "there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green
field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and"- dropping
into English- "nine hundred devils."

"Ah," said Kim, "I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a
horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men
making ready the ground for these matters. That is how, my father
said, they always did; and it is always so when men work magic."

If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those
papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the Provincial
Lodge and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills; but what she had
heard of magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held views of his own. As
he reached the years of indiscretion, he learned to avoid missionaries
and white men of serious aspect who asked who he was, and what he did.
For Kim did nothing with an immense success. True, he knew the
wonderful walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer
Fort Ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than
anything Haroun al Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild
as that of the Arabian Nights, but missionaries and secretaries of
charitable societies could not see the beauty of it. His nickname
through the wards was "Little Friend of all the World"; and very
often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night
on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion.
It was intrigue, of course- he knew that much, as he had known all
evil since he could speak- but what he loved was the game for its
own sake- the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the
crawl up a water-pipe, the sights and sounds of the women's world on
the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop
under cover of the hot dark. Then there were holy men, ash-smeared
faquirs by their brick shrines under the trees at the riverside,
with whom he was quite familiar- greeting them as they returned from
begging-tours, and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. The
woman who looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear
European clothes- trousers, a shirt, and a battered hat. Kim found
it easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on
certain businesses. One of the young men of fashion- he who was
found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake- had
once given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a
low-caste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under some
baulks in Nila Ram's timber-yard, beyond the Punjab High Court,
where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven
down the Ravee. When there was business or frolic afoot, Kim would use
his properties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out from
shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at a
Hindu festival. Sometimes there was food in the house, more often
there was not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his native
friends.

As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again
from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal, and
Abdullah, the sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remark to the
native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door. The
big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did the
water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat-skin
bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over new
packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except the peasants from
the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the things that
men made in their own Province and elsewhere. The Museum was given
up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody who sought wisdom
could ask the curator to explain.

"Off! Off! Let me up!" cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah's
wheel.

"Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi," sang
Kim. "All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!"

"Let me up!" shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered
cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India
is the only democratic land in the world.

"The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off.
Thy father was a pastry-cook- "

He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring
Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had
never seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold
of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim
refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long
open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On
his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter. His face was yellow
and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the
bazar. His eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little
slits of onyx.

"Who is that?" said Kim to his companions.

"Perhaps it is a man," said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.

"Without doubt," returned Kim; "but he is no man of India that I
have ever seen."

"A priest, perhaps," said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. "See! He
goes into the Wonder House!"

"Nay, nay," said the policeman, shaking his head. "I do not
understand your talk." The constable spoke Punjabi. "Oh, Friend of all
the World, what does he say?"

"Send him hither," said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing
his bare heels. "He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo."

The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was
old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking
artemisia of the mountain passes.

"O Children, what is that big house?" he said in very fair Urdu.

"The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!" Kim gave him no title- such as
Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man's creed.

"Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?"

"It is written above the door- all can enter."

"Without payment?"

"I go in and out. I am no banker," laughed Kim.

"Alas! I am an old man. I did not know." Then, fingering his rosary,
he half turned to the Museum.

"What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?" Kim
asked.

"I came by Kulu- from beyond the Kailas- but what know you? From the
hills where" he sighed- "the air and water are fresh and cool."

"Aha! Khitai" (Chinaman), said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had once
chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above the boots.

"Pahari?" (a hillman), said little Chota Lal.

"Ay, child- a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear of
Bhotiyal (Tibet)? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya (Tibetan), since you
must know- a lama- or, say a guru in your tongue."

"A guru from Tibet," said Kim. "I have not seen such a man. They
be Hindus in Tibet, then?"

"We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our
lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die. Now do
you, who are children, know as much as I do who am old?" He smiled
benignantly on the boys.

"Hast thou eaten?"

He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn wooden begging-bowl.
The boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.

"I do not wish to eat yet." He turned his head like an old
tortoise in the sunlight. "Is it true that there are many images in
the Wonder House of Lahore?" He repeated the last words as one
making sure of an address.

"That is true," said Abdullah. "It is full of heathen buts. Thou
also art an idolater."

"Never mind him," said Kim. "That is the Government's house and
there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard.
Come with me and I will show."

"Strange priests eat boys," whispered Chota Lal.

"And he is a stranger and a but-parast" (idolater), said Abdullah,
the Mohammedan.

Kim laughed. "He is new. Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe.
Come!"

Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man
followed and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger
figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long
since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not
unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch. There
were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragments of
statues and slabs crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick
walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of the North Country and now,
dug up and labelled, made the pride of the Museum. In open-mouthed
wonder the lama turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt
attention before a large alto-relief representing a coronation or
apotheosis of the Lord Buddha. The Master was represented seated on
a lotus the petals of which were so deeply undercut as to show
almost detached. Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings,
elders, and old-time Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with
fishes and water-birds. Two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath
over His head; above them another pair supported an umbrella
surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

"The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself," the lama half
sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist invocation:

  "To Him the Way- the Law- Apart-
  Whom Maya held beneath her heart
  Ananda's Lord- the Bodhisat.

"And He is Here! The Most Excellent Law is here also! My
pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!"

"Yonder is the Sahib," said Kim, and dodged sideways among the cases
of the arts and manufacture wing. A white-bearded Englishman was
looking at the lama, who gravely turned and saluted him and after some
fumbling drew forth a note-book and a scrap of paper.

"Yes, that is my name," smiling at the clumsy, childish print.

"One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places- he is now
Abbot of the Lung-Cho Monastery- gave it me, stammered the lama. "He
spoke of these." His lean hand moved tremulously round.

"Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am
here"- he glanced at the lama's face- "to gather knowledge. Come to my
office awhile." The old man was trembling with excitement.

The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from
the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against
a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct,
stretched out to listen and watch.

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama,
haltingly at first, spoke to the curator of his own lamassery, the
Suchzen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march away. The
curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very
place, perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of
many-hued strata.

"Ay, ay!" The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of
Chinese work. "Here is the little door through which we bring wood
before winter. And thou- the English know of these things? He who is
now Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe. The Lord- the
Excellent One- He has honour here too? And His life is known?"

"It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art
rested."

Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the curator beside him,
went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee and the
appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the
blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek
convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the
sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the curator supplied it
from his mound of books- French and German, with photographs and
reproductions.

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian
story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father
listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin
Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of
impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park;
the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat
in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at
Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost
countless repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and
the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the
curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a
scholar of parts. And they went at it all over again, the lama
taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a
bewildering mixture of Urdu and Tibetan. He had heard of the travels
of the Chinese pilgrims, Fo-Hian and Hwen-Thiang, and was anxious to
know if there was any translation of their record. He drew in his
breath as he turned helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas
Julien. "'Tis all here. A treasure locked." Then he composed himself
reverently to listen to fragments, hastily rendered into Urdu. For the
first time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the
help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the Holy
Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced
with yellow. The brown finger followed the curator's pencil from point
to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here
Mahabodi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of
the Holy One's death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in
silence for a while, and the curator lit another pipe. Kim had
fallen asleep. When he waked, the talk, still in spate, was more
within his comprehension.

"And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to
the Holy Places which His foot had trod- to the Birthplace, even to
Kapila; then to Maha Bodhi, which is Buddh Gaya- to the Monastery-
to the Deer-park- to the place of His death."

The lama lowered his voice. "And I come here alone. For five- seven-
eighteen- forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law was not
well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms,
and idolatry. Even as the child outside said but now. Ay, even as
the child said, with but-parasti."

"So it comes with all faiths."

"Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were
dried pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed Law
have cumbered ourselves- that, too, had no worth to these old eyes.
Even the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one
another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion. But I have another
desire"- the seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the
curator, and the long forefinger nail tapped on the table. "Your
scholars, by these books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all
their wanderings; but there are things which they have not sought out.
I know nothing- nothing do I know- but I go to free myself from the
Wheel of Things by a broad and open road." He smiled with most
simple triumph. "As a pilgrim to the Holy Places I acquire merit.
But there is more. Listen to a true thing. When our gracious Lord,
being as yet a youth, sought a mate, men said, in His father's
court, that He was too tender for marriage. Thou knowest?"

The curator nodded, wondering what would come next.

"So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. And
at the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which they gave
Him, called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou knowest?"

"It is written. I have read."

"And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far
beyond sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth,
there broke out a stream which presently became a River, whose nature,
by our Lord's beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere He freed
himself, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and
speckle of sin."

"So it is written," said the curator sadly.

The lama drew a long breath. "Where is that River? Fountain of
Wisdom, where fell the arrow?"

"Alas, my brother, I do not know," said the curator.

"Nay, if it please thee to forget- the one thing only that thou hast
not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with
my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know He drew the
bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then,
is the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But
where is the River?"

"If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?"

"By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things," the lama
went on, unheeding. "The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some
little stream, may be- dried in the heats? But the Holy One would
never so cheat an old man."

"I do not know. I do not know."

The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth
from the Englishman's. "I see thou dost not know. Not being of the
Law, the matter is hid from thee."

"Ay- hidden- hidden."

"We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I"- he rose with a
sweep of the soft thick drapery- "I go to cut myself free. Come also!"

"I am bound," said the curator. "But whither goest thou?"

"First to Kashi (Benares): where else? There I shall meet one of the
pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in
secret, and from him haply I may learn. May be he will go with me to
Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I
seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go- for the place
is not known where the arrow fell."

"And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to
Benares."

"By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I
came hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to
see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and
snatching up their threads"- he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a
telegraph-pole flashing past the train. "But later, I was cramped
and desired to walk, as I am used."

"And thou art sure of thy road?" said the curator.

"Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the
appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I
knew in my lamassery from sure report," said the lama proudly.

"And when dost thou go?" The curator smiled at the mixture of
old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India to-day.

"As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to
the River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the
hours of the trains that go south."

"And for food?" Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere
about them, but the curator wished to make sure.

"For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even
as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with
me when I left the hills a chela (disciple) who begged for me as the
Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died.
I have now no chela, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the
charitable to acquire merit." He nodded his head valiantly.

Learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an
enthusiast in this quest.

"Be it so," said the curator, smiling. "Suffer me now to acquire
merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of
white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three- thick
and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles."

The curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but
the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid
into the lama's hand, saying: "Try these."

"A feather! A very feather upon the face!" The old man turned his
head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. "How scarcely do I feel
them! How clearly do I see!"

"They be bilaur- crystal and will never scratch. May they help
thee to thy River, for they are thine."

"I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book," said the
lama, "as a sign of friendship between priest and priest- and now"- he
fumbled at his belt, detached the open iron-work pencase, and laid
it on the curator's table. "That is for a memory between thee and
me- my pencase. It is something old- even as I am."

It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not
smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the curator's bosom
had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama
resume his gift.

"When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a
written picture of the Padma Samthora- such as I used to make on
silk at the lamassery. Yes- and of the Wheel of Life," he chuckled,
"for we be craftsmen together, thou and I."

The curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who
still have the secret of the conventional brushpen Buddhist pictures
which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But the lama
strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the
great statue of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed through the
turnstiles.

Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him
wildly. This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he
meant to investigate further: precisely as he would have
investigated a new building or a strange festival in Lahore city.
The lama was his trove, and he purposed to take possession. Kim's
mother had been Irish too.

The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye
fell on Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for a
while, and he felt old, forlorn, and very empty.

"Do not sit under that gun," said the policeman loftily.

"Huh! Owl!" was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf. "Sit under that
gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milk-woman's
slippers, Dunnoo?"

That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the
moment, but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim's clear yell could
call up legions of bad bazar boys if need arose.

"And whom didst thou worship within?" said Kim affably, squatting in
the shade beside the lama.

"I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law."

Kim accepted this new god without emotion. He knew already a few
score.

"And what dost thou do?"

"I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk.
What is the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do of
Tibet, or speaking aloud?"

"Those who beg in silence starve in silence," said Kim, quoting a
native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again, sighing
for his disciple, dead in faraway Kulu. Kim watched- head to one side,
considering and interested.

"Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city- all who are
charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled."

Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl.

"Rest thou. I know the people."

He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste
vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down the
Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.

"Oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?" she cried.

"Nay," said Kim proudly. "There is a new priest in the city- a man
such as I have never seen."

"Old priest- young tiger," said the woman angrily. "I am tired of
new priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the father of
my son a well of charity to give to all who ask?"

"No," said Kim. "Thy man is rather yagi (bad-tempered) than yogi
(a holy man). But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder House
has talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this bowl. He
waits."

"That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much
grace as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket of
onions already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl. He
comes here again."

The huge, mouse-coloured Brahminee bull of the ward was
shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen plantain
hanging out of his mouth. He headed straight for the shop, well
knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his head, and puffed
heavily along the line of baskets ere making his choice. Up flew Kim's
hard little heel and caught him on his moist blue nose. He snorted
indignantly, and walked away across the tram rails, his hump quivering
with rage.

"See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,
mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop- yes, and some
vegetable curry."

A growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay.

"He drove away the bull," said the woman in an undertone. "It is
good to give to the poor." She took the bowl and returned it full of
hot rice.

"But my yogi is not a cow," said Kim gravely, making a hole with his
fingers in the top of the mound. "A little curry is good, and a
fried cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I think."

"It is a hole as big as thy head," said the woman fretfully. But she
filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable curry, clapped
a dried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified butter on the cake,
dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at the side; and Kim looked at
the load lovingly.

"That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to
this house. He is a bold beggarman."

"And thou?" laughed the woman. "But speak well of bulls. Hast thou
not told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a field to
help thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy man's blessing
upon me. Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my daughter's sore eyes.
Ask him that also, O thou Little Friend of all the World."

But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging pariah
dogs and hungry acquaintances.

"Thus do we beg who know the way of it," said he proudly to the
lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. "Eat now and- I
will eat with thee. Ohe bhistie!" he called to the water-carrier,
sluicing the crotons by the Museum. "Give water here. We men are
thirsty."

"We men!" said the bhistie, laughing. "Is one skinful enough for
such a pair? Drink then, in the name of the Compassionate."

He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank native
fashion; but the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible
upper draperies and drink ceremonially.

"Pardesi" (a foreigner), Kim explained, as the old man delivered
in an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.

They ate together in great content, clearing the beggar's bowl. Then
the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd, fingered his
rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the
shadow of Zam-Zammah grew long.

Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively young
Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that they
sell to students of the Punjab University who copy English customs.
Then he smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the belly of the gun,
and the outcome of his thoughts was a sudden and stealthy departure in
the direction of Nila Ram's timber-yard.

The lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun
with lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and
subordinates from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in all
directions, but none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a dirty
turban and Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his head on
his knees and wailed.

"What is this?" said the boy, standing before him. "Hast thou been
robbed?"

"It is my new chela (my disciple) that is gone away from me, and I
know not where he is."

"And what like of man was thy disciple?"

"It was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account of
the merit which I had gained when I bowed before the Law within
there." He pointed towards the Museum. "He came upon me to show me a
road which I had lost. He led me into the Wonder House, and by his
talk emboldened to speak to the Keeper of the Images, so that I was
cheered and made strong. And when I was faint with hunger he begged
for me, as would a chela for his teacher. Suddenly was he sent.
Suddenly has he gone away. It was in my mind to have taught him the
Law upon the road to Benares."

Kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in the
Museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth, which is a
thing a native on the road seldom presents to a stranger.

"But I see now that he was but sent for a purpose. By this I know
that I shall find a certain River for which I seek."

"The River of the Arrow?" said Kim, with a superior smile.

"Is this yet another Sending?" cried the lama. "To none have I
spoken of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. Who art thou?"

"Thy chela," said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. "I have never
seen anyone like to thee in all this my life. I go with thee to
Benares. And, too, I think that so old a man as thou, speaking the
truth to chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a disciple."

"But the River- the River of the Arrow?"

"Oh, that I heard when thou wast speaking to the Englishman. I lay
against the door."

The lama sighed. "I thought thou hadst been a guide permitted.
Such things fall sometimes- but I am not worthy. Thou dost not,
then, know of the River?"

"Not I." Kim laughed uneasily. "I go to look for- for a bull- a
Red Bull on a green field who shall help me." Boy-like, if an
acquaintance had a scheme, Kim was quite ready with one of his own;
and, boy-like, he had really thought for as much as twenty minutes
at a time of his father's prophecy.

"To what, child?" said the lama.

"God knows, but so my father told me. I heard thy talk in the Wonder
House of all those new strange places in the Hills, and if one so
old and so little- so used to truth-telling- may go out for the
small matter of a river, it seemed to me that I too must go
a-travelling. If it is our fate to find those things we shall find
them- thou, thy River; and I, my Bull, and the strong Pillars and some
other matters that I forget."

"It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free," said the
lama.

"That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king," said Kim,
serenely prepared for anything.

"I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road," the lama
replied in the voice of authority. "Let us go to Benares."

"Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day."

"But there is no place to sleep." The old man was used to the
order of his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the Rule
decrees, preferred a decency in these things.

"We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai," said Kim, laughing
at his perplexity. "I have a friend there. Come!"

The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their
way through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the lama
mooned through it like a man in a dream. It was his first experience
of a large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-car with its
continually squealing brakes frightened him. Half pushed, half
towed, he arrived at the high gate of the Kashmir Serai: that huge
open square over against the railway station, surrounded with arched
cloisters where the camel and horse caravans put up on their return
from Central Asia. Here were all manner of Northern folk, tending
tethered ponies and kneeling camels; loading and unloading bales and
bundles; drawing water for the evening meal at the creaking
well-windlasses; piling grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed
stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers;
taking on new grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in
the packed square. The cloisters, reached by three or four masonry
steps, made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. Most of
them were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the
space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into
rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous native
padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner was away, and a few rude-
sometimes very rude- chalk or paint scratches told where he had
gone. Thus: "Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan." Below, in coarse
verse; "O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on the coat of a Kabuli,
why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to live so long?"

Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts, sidled
along the cloisters to the far end, nearest the railway station, where
Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came in from that
mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.

Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life- especially
between his tenth and his thirteenth year- and the big burly Afghan,
his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was elderly and did not
wish his gray hairs to show), knew the boy's value as a gossip.
Sometimes he would tell Kim to watch a man who had nothing whatever to
do with horses: to follow him for one whole day and report every
soul with whom he talked. Kim would deliver himself of his tale at
evening, and Mahbub would listen without a word or gesture. It was
intrigue of some kind, Kim knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing
whatever to anyone except Mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot
from the cookshop at the head of the serai, and once as much as
eight annas in money.

"He is here," said Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose.
"Ohe, Mahbub Ali!" He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind the
bewildered lama.

The horse-trader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed, was
lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at an
immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the cry;
and seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his deep chest.

"Allah! A lama! A Red Lama! It is far from Lahore to the Passes.
What dost thou do here?"

The lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically.

"God's curse on all unbelievers!" said Mahbub. "I do not give to a
lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels. They
may value your blessings. Oh, horse-boys, here is a countryman of
yours. See if he be hungry."

A shaven, crouching Balti, who had come down with the horses, and
who was nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist, fawned upon the
priest, and in thick gutturals besought the Holy One to sit at the
horse-boys' fire.

"Go!" said Kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away,
leaving Kim at the edge of the cloister.

"Go!" said Mahbub Ali, returning to his hookah. "Little Hindu, run
away. God's curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my tail who
are of thy faith."

"Maharaj," whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and
thoroughly enjoying the situation; "my father is dead- my mother is
dead- my stomach is empty."

"Beg from my men among the horses, I say. There must be some
Hindus in my tail."

"Oh, Mahbub Ali, but am I a Hindu?" said Kim in English.

The trader gave no sign of astonishment, but looked under shaggy
eyebrows.

"Little Friend of all the World," said he, "what is this?"

"Nothing. I am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a
pilgrimage together- to Benares, he says. He is quite mad, and I am
tired of Lahore city. I wish new air and water."

"But for whom dost thou work? Why come to me?" The voice was harsh
with suspicion.

"To whom else should I come? I have no money. It is not good to go
about without money. Thou wilt sell many horses to the officers.
They are very fine horses, these new ones: I have seen them. Give me a
rupee, Mahbub Ali, and when I come to my wealth I will give thee a
bond and pay."

"Um," said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. "Thou hast never before
lied to me. Call that lama- stand back in the dark."

"Oh, our tales will agree," said Kim laughing.

"We go to Benares," said the lama, as soon as he understood the
drift of Mahbub Ali's questions. "The boy and I. I go to seek for a
certain River."

"Maybe- but the boy?"

"He is my disciple. He was sent, I think, to guide me to that River.
Sitting under a gun was I when he came suddenly. Such things have
befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed. But I remember
now, he said he was of this world- a Hindu."

"And his name?"

"That I did not ask. Is he not my disciple?"

"His country- his face- his village? Mussalman- Sikh- Hindu- Jain-
low caste or high?"

"Why should I ask? There is neither high nor low in the Middle
Way. If he is my chela- does- will- can anyone take him from me?
For, look you, without him I shall not find my River." He wagged his
head solemnly.

"None shall take him from thee. Go, sit among my Baltis," said
Mahbub Ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise.

"Is he not quite mad?" said Kim, coming forward to the light
again. "Why should I lie to thee, Hajji?"

Mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. Then he began, almost
whispering: "Umballa is on the road to Benares- if indeed ye two go
there."

"Tck! Tck! I tell thee he does not know how to lie- as we two know."

"And if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as Umballa, I will
give thee money. It concerns a horse- a white stallion which I have
sold to an officer upon the last time I returned from the Passes.
But then- stand nearer and hold up hands as begging- the pedigree of
the white stallion was not fully established, and that officer, who is
now at Umballa, bade me make it clear." (Mahbub here described the
horse and the appearance of the officer.) "So the message to that
officer will be: 'The pedigree of the white stallion is fully
established.' By this will he know that thou comest from me. He will
then say 'What proof has thou?' and thou wilt answer: 'Mahbub Ali
has given me the proof.'"

"And all for the sake of a white stallion," said Kim, with a giggle,
his eyes aflame.

"That pedigree I will give thee now- in my own fashion- and some
hard words as well." A shadow passed behind Kim, and a feeding
camel. Mahbub Ali raised his voice.

"Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead.
Thy father is dead. So is it with all of them. Well, well-" he
turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of soft,
greasy Mussalman bread to the boy. "Go and lie among my horse-boys for
to-night- thou and the lama. Tomorrow I may give thee service."

Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he
found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with
three silver rupees- enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust money and
paper into his leather amulet-case. The lama, sumptuously fed by
Mahbub's Baltis, was already asleep in a corner of one of the
stalls. Kim lay down beside him and laughed. He knew he had rendered a
service to Mahbub Ali, and not for one little minute did he believe
the tale of the stallion's pedigree.

But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best
horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader,
whose caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond, was
registered in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey
Department as C.25.1B. Twice or thrice yearly C.25 would send in a
little story, badly told but most interesting, and generally- it was
checked by the statements of R.17 and M.4- quite true. It concerned
all manner of out-of-the-way mountain principalities, explorers of
nationalities other than English, and the gun-trade- was, in brief,
a small portion of that vast mass of "information received" on which
the Indian Government acts. But, recently, five confederated Kings,
who had no business to confederate, had been informed by a kindly
Northern Power that there was a leakage of news from their territories
into British India. So those Kings' prime ministers were seriously
annoyed and took steps, after the Oriental fashion. They suspected,
among many others, the bullying red-bearded horse-dealer whose
caravans ploughed through their fastnesses belly deep in snow. At
least, his caravan that season had been ambushed and shot at twice
on the way down, when Mahbub's men accounted for three strange
ruffians who might, or might not, have been hired for the job.
Therefore Mahbub had avoided halting at the insalubrious city of
Peshawur, and had come through without stop to Lahore, where,
knowing his country-people, he anticipated curious developments.

And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an
hour longer than was necessary- a wad of closely folded
tissue-paper, wrapped in oilskin- an impersonal, unaddressed
statement, with five microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most
scandalously betrayed the five confederated Kings, the sympathetic
Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Peshawur, a firm of gun-makers in
Belgium, and an important, semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the
south. This last was R.17's work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond
the Dora Pass and was carrying in for R.17, who, owing to
circumstances over which he had no control, could not leave his post
of observation. Dynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of
C.25; and even an Oriental, with an Oriental's views of the value of
time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better.
Mahbub had no particular desire to die by violence, because two or
three family blood-feuds across the border hung unfinished on his
hands, and when these scores were cleared he intended to settle down
as a more or less virtuous citizen. He had never passed the serai gate
since his arrival two days ago, but had been ostentatious in sending
telegrams to Bombay, where be banked some of his money; to Delhi,
where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling horses to the agent of
a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an Englishman was excitedly
demanding the pedigree of a white stallion. The public
letter-writer, who knew English, composed excellent telegrams, such
as:- "Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa- Horse is Arabian as already
advised. Sorrowful delayed-pedigree which am translating." And later
to the same address: "Much sorrowful delay. Will forward pedigree." To
this sub-partner at Delhi he wired: "Lutuf Ullah- Have wired two
thousand rupees your credit Luchman Narain's bank." This was
entirely in the way of trade, but every one of those telegrams was
discussed and re-discussed by parties who conceived themselves to be
interested, before they went over to the railway station in charge
of a foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on
the road.

When, in Mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the wells
of inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on him,
sent from heaven; and, being as prompt as he was unscrupulous,
Mahbub Ali, used to taking all sorts of gusty chances, pressed him
into service on the spot.

A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a
moment's interest as they wandered about India, the land of
pilgrims; but no one would suspect them or, what was more to the
point, rob.

He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the
case. If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm, the
paper would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa
leisurely and- at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion- repeat
his tale by word of mouth to the people concerned.

But R.17's report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would
be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. However,
God was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he could for the
time being. Kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a
lie. That would have been a fatal blot on Kim's character if Mahbub
had not known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub's business,
Kim could lie like an Oriental.

Then Mahbub Ali rolled across the serai to the Gate of the Harpies
who paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at some pains to
call on the one girl who, he had reason to believe, was a particular
friend of a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit who had waylaid his simple
Balti in the matter of the telegrams. It was an utterly foolish
thing to do; because they fell to drinking perfumed brandy against the
Law of the Prophet, and Mahbub grew wonderfully drunk, and the gates
of his mouth were loosened, and he pursued the Flower of Delight
with the feet of intoxication till he fell flat among the cushions,
where the Flower of Delight, aided by a smooth-faced Kashmiri
pundit, searched him from head to foot most thoroughly.

About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub's deserted
stall. The horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door unlocked,
and his men were busy celebrating their return to India with a whole
sheep of Mahbub's bounty. A sleek young gentleman from Delhi, armed
with a bunch of keys which the Flower had unshackled from the
senseless one's belt, went through every single box, bundle, mat,
and saddlebag in Mahbub's possession even more systematically than the
Flower and the pundit were searching the owner.

"And I think," said the Flower scornfully an hour later, one rounded
elbow on the snoring carcase, "that he is no more than a pig of an
Afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and horses.
Moreover, he may have sent it away by now- if ever there were such a
thing."

"Nay- in a matter touching Five Kings it would be next his black
heart," said the pundit. "Was there nothing?"

The Delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. "I
searched between the soles of his slippers as the Flower searched
his clothes. This is not the man but another. I leave little unseen."

"They did not say he was the very man," said the pundit
thoughtfully. "They said, 'Look if he be the man, since our councils
are troubled.'"

"That North country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of lice.
There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and Farrukh Shah- all heads of
Kafilas- who deal there," said the Flower.

"They have not yet come in," said the pundit. "Thou must ensnare
them later."

"Phew!" said the Flower with deep disgust, rolling Mahbub's head
from her lap. "I earn my money. Farrukh Shah is a bear, Ali Beg a
swashbuckler, and old Sikandar Khan- yaie! Go! I sleep now. This swine
will not stir till dawn."

When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of
drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an
enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and
staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to
it.

"What a colt's trick," said he to himself. "As if every girl in
Peshawur did not use it! But 'twas prettily done. Now God He knows how
many more there be upon the road who have orders to test me- perhaps
with the knife. So it stands that the boy must go to Umballa- and by
rail- for the writing is somthing urgent. I abide here, following
the Flower and drinking wine as an Afghan coper should."

He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there
heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.

"Up!" He stirred a sleeper. "Whither went those who lay here last
even- the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?"

"Nay," grunted the man; "the old madman rose at second cockcrow
saying he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away."

"The curse of Allah on all unbelievers," said Mahbub heartily, and
climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.

But it was Kim who had wakened the lama- Kim with one eye laid
against a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man's
search through the boxes. This was no common thief that turned over
letters, bills, and saddles- no mere burglar who ran a little knife
sideways into the soles of Mahbub's slippers, or picked the seams of
the saddle-bags so deftly. At first Kim had been minded to give the
alarm- the long-drawn "cho-or- choor!" (thief! thief!) that sets the
serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on
amulet, drew his own conclusions.

"It must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie," said he, "the
thing that I carry to Umballa. Better that we go now. Those who search
bags with knives may presently search bellies with knives. Surely
there is a woman behind this. Hai! Hai!" in a whisper to the
light-sleeping old man. "Come. It is time- time to go to Benares."

The lama rose obediently, and they passed out of the serai like
shadows.

                                 2

               "For whoso will, from Pride released,
                Contemning neither creed nor priest,
                May hear the Soul of all the East
                  About him at Kamakura."


They entered the fort-like raIlway station, black in the end of
night; the electrics sizzling over the goods yard where they handle
the heavy Northern grain-traffic.

"This is the work of devils!" said the lama, recoiling from the
hollow echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry
platforms, and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic stone
hall paved, it seemed, with the sheeted dead- third-class passengers
who had taken their tickets overnight and were sleeping in the
waiting-rooms. All hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals,
and their passenger traffic is regulated accordingly.

"This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that
hole"- Kim pointed to the ticket-office- "who will give thee a paper
to take thee to Umballa.

"But we go to Benares," he replied petulantly.

"All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!"

"Take thou the purse."

The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as
the 3.25 a.m. south bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to life,
and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of water
and sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and shrill yells of
women gathering up their baskets, their families, and their husbands.

"It is the train- only the te-rain. It will come here. Wait!" Amazed
at the lama's immense simplicity (he had handed him a small bag full
of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket to Umballa. A sleepy clerk
grunted and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six miles
distant.

"Nay," said Kim, scanning it with a grin. "This may serve for
farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done, babu.
Now give the ticket to Umballa."

The babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

"Now another to Amritzar," said Kim, who had no notion of spending
Mahbub Ali's money on anything so crude as a paid ride to Umballa.
"The price is so much. The small money in return is just so much. I
know the ways of the te-rain.... Never did yogi need chela as thou
dost," he went on merrily to the bewildered lama. "They would have
flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me. This way! Come." He returned
the money, keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the
Umballa ticket as his commission- the immemorial commission of Asia.

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class
carriage. "Were it not better to walk?" said he weakly.

A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. "Is he afraid?
Do not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid of the
te-rain. Enter! This thing is the work of the Government."

"I do not fear," said the lama. "Have ye room within for two?"

"There is no room even for a mouse," shrilled the wife of a
well-to-do cultivator- a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur district.
"Our night trains are not as well looked after as the day ones,
where the sexes are very strictly kept to separate carriages."

"Oh, mother of my son, we can make space," said the blue-turbaned
husband. "Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see'st thou?"

"And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him sit
on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!" She looked round for
approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed behind her
head drapery.

"Enter! Enter!" cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded
account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: "It is well
to be kind to the poor."

"Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn
calf," said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all
laughed.

"Will it travel to Benares?" said the lama.

"Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left," cried
Kim.

"See!" shrilled the Amritzar girl. "He has never entered a train. Oh
see!"

"Nay, help," said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand and
hauling him in. "Thus is it done, father."

"But- but- I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on a
bench," said the lama. "Moreover, it cramps me."

"I say," began the money-lender, pursing his lips, "that there is
not one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us to
break. We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples."

"Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones," said the wife,
scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.

"I said we might have gone by cart along the road," said the
husband, "and thus have saved some money."

"Yes- and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way. That
was talked out ten thousand times."

"Ay, by ten thousand tongues," grunted he.

"The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak. Oho! He is of that
sort which may not look at or reply to a woman." For the lama,
constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of her. "And his
disciple is like him?"

"Nay, mother," said Kim most promptly. "Not when the woman is
well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry."

"A beggar's answer," said the Sikh, laughing. "Thou hast brought
it on thyself, sister!" Kim's hands were crooked in supplication.

"And whither goest thou?" said the woman, handing him the half of
a cake from a greasy package.

"Even to Benares."

"Jugglers belike?" the young soldier suggested. "Have ye any
tricks to pass the time? Why does not that yellow man answer?"

"Because," said Kim stoutly, "he is holy, and thinks upon matters
hidden from thee."

"That may be well. We of the Loodhiana Sikhs," he rolled it out
sonorously, "do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight."

"My sister's brother's son is naik (corporal) in that regiment,"
said the Sikh craftsman quietly. "There are also some Dogra
companies there." The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste
than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.

"They are all one to me," said the Amritzar girl.

"That we believe," snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly.

"Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands
are, as it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the
caste, but beyond that again"- she looked round timidly- "the bond
of the Pulton- the Regiment- eh?"

"My brother is in a Jat regiment," said the cultivator. "Dogras be
good men."

"Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion," said the soldier, with
a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. "Thy Sikhs thought so
when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the
face of eight Afreedee standards on the ridge not three months gone."

He told the story of a border action in which the Dogra companies of
the Loodhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar girl
smiled; for she knew the tale was to win her approval.

"Alas!" said the cultivator's wife at the end. "So their villages
were burnt and their little children made homeless?"

"They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of the
Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?"

"Ay, and here they cut our tickets," said the banker, fumbling at
his belt.

The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came
round. Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where
people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim
produced his and was told to get out.

"But I go to Umballa," he protested. "I go with this holy man."

"Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care. This ticket is only
to Amritzar. Out!

Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his
father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's declining
years, and that the lama would die without his care. All the
carriage bade the guard be merciful- the banker was specially eloquent
here- but the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked,
he could not overtake the situation and Kim lifted up his voice and
wept outside the carriage window.

"I am very poor. My father is dead- my mother is dead. Oh,
charitable ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?"

"What- what is this?" the lama repeated. "He must go to Benares.
He must come with me. He is my chela. If there is money to be paid-"

"Oh, be silent," whispered Kim; "are we Rajahs to throw away good
silver when the world is so charitable?"

The Amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her
that Kim kept his watchful eye. Ladies of that persuasion, he knew,
were generous.

"A ticket- a little tikkut to Umballa- O Breaker of Hearts!" She
laughed. "Hast thou no charity?"

"Does the holy man come from the North?"

"From far and far in the North he comes," cried Kim. "From among the
hills."

"There is snow among the pine trees in the North- in the hills there
is snow. My mother was from Kulu. Get thee a ticket. Ask him for a
blessing."

"Ten thousand blessings," shrilled Kim. "O Holy One, a woman has
given us in charity so that I can come with thee- a woman with a
golden heart. I run for the tikkut."

The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to
the platform. He bowed his head that he might not see her, and
muttered in Tibetan as she passed on with the crowd.

"Light come- light go," said the cultivator's wife viciously.

"She has acquired merit," returned the lama. "Beyond doubt it was
a nun."

"There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone. Return, old man,
or the train may depart without thee," cried the banker.

"Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food
also," said Kim, leaping to his place. "Now eat, Holy One. Look. Day
comes!"

Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away
across the flat green levels. All the rich Punjab lay out in the
splendour of the keen sun. The lama flinched a little as the
telegraph-posts swung by.

"Great is the speed of the train," said the banker, with a
patronising grin. "We have gone farther since Lahore than thou couldst
walk in two days: at even, we shall enter Umballa."

"And that is still far from Benares," said the lama wearily,
mumbling over the cakes that Kim offered. They all unloosed their
bundles and made their morning meal. Then the banker, the
cultivator, and the soldier prepared their pipes and wrapped the
compartment in choking, acrid smoke, spitting and coughing and
enjoying themselves. The Sikh and the cultivator's wife chewed pan;
the lama took snuff and told his beads, while Kim, cross-legged,
smiled over the comfort of a full stomach.

"What rivers have ye by Benares?" said the lama of a sudden to the
carriage at large.

"We have Gunga," returned the banker, when the little titter had
subsided.

"What others?"

"What other than Gunga?"

"Nay, but in my mind was the thought of a certain River of healing."

"That is Gunga. Who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the
Gods. Thrice have I made pilgrimage to Gunga." He looked round
proudly.

"There was need," said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers'
laugh turned against the banker.

"Clean- to return again to the Gods," the lama muttered. "And to
go forth on the round of lives anew- still tied to the Wheel." He
shook his head testily. "But maybe there is a mistake. Who, then, made
Gunga in the beginning?"

"The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?" the banker said appalled.

"I follow the Law- the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that
made Gunga. What like of Gods were they?"

The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable that
anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.

"What- what is thy God?" said the money-lender at last.

"Hear!" said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. "Hear: for I
speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!"

He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his
own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese
book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on
reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in
strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal;
dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning
and will continue to the end.

"Um!" said the soldier of the Loodhiana Sikhs. 'There was a
Mohammedan regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a priest
of theirs- he was, as I remember, a naik- when the fit was on him,
spake prophecies. But the mad all are in God's keeping. His officers
overlooked much in that man."

The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange
land. "Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the bow,"
he said.

This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while
he told it. "Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River. Know ye
aught that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case."

"There is Gunga- and Gunga alone- who washes away sin," ran the
murmur round the carriage.

"Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way," said the
cultivator's wife, looking out of window. "See how they have blessed
the crops."

"To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter," said her
husband. "For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land
suffices, and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Homestead." He shrugged
one knotted, bronzed shoulder.

"Think you our Lord came so far north?" said the lama, turning to
Kim.

"It may be," Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on the
floor.

"The last of the Great Ones," said the Sikh with authority, "was
Sikander Julkarn (Alexander the Great). He paved the streets of
Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds
to this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God."

"Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi," said the young soldier
jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. That is all that makes a
Sikh." But he did not say this very loud.

The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. In
the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning- "Om mane
pudme hum! Om mane pudme hum!"- and the thick click of the wooden
rosary beads.

"It irks me," he said at last. "The speed and the clatter irk me.
Moreover, my chela, I think that may be we have overpassed that
River."

"Peace, peace," said Kim. "Was not the River near Benares? We are
yet far from the place."

"But- if our Lord came north, it may be any one of these little ones
that we have run across.

"I do not know."

"But thou wast sent to me- wast thou sent to me?- for the merit I
had acquired over yonder at Suchzen. From beside the cannon didst thou
come- bearing two faces- and two garbs."

"Peace. One must not speak of these things here," whispered Kim.
"There was but one of me. Think again and thou wilt remember. A boy- a
Hindu boy- by the great green cannon."

"But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard- holy-
among images- who himself made more sure my assurance of the River
of the Arrow?"

"He- we- went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the Gods
there," Kim explained to the openly listening company. "And the
Sahib of the Wonder House talked to him- yes, this is truth- as a
brother. He is a very holy man from far beyond the hills. Rest thou.
In time we come to Umballa."

"But my River- the River of my healing?"

"And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on
foot. So that we miss nothing- not even a little rivulet in a
fieldside."

"But thou hast a Search of thine own?" The lama- very pleased that
he remembered so well- sat bolt upright.

"Ay," said Kim, humouring him. The boy was entirely happy to be
out chewing pan and seeing new people in the great good-tempered
world.

"It was a Bull- a Red Bull that shall come and help thee- and
carry thee- whither? I have forgotten. A Red Bull on a green field,
was it not?"

"Nay, it will carry me nowhere," said Kim. "It is but a tale I
told thee."

"What is this?" the cultivator's wife leaned forward, her
bracelets clinking on her arm. "Do ye both dream dreams? A Red Bull on
a green field, that shall carry thee to the Heavens- or what? Was it a
vision? Did one make a prophecy? We have a Red Bull in our village
behind Jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of
our fields!"

"Give a woman an old wife's tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a
thread, they will weave wonderful things," said the Sikh. "All holy
men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain
that power."

"A Red Bull on a green field, was it?" the lama repeated. "In a
former life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the Bull will come
to reward thee."

"Nay- nay- it was but a tale one told to me- for a jest belike.
But I will seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy
River and rest from the clatter of the train."

"It may be that the Bull knows- that he is sent to guide us both,"
said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating
Kim: "This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of
this world."

"Beggars a plenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a
yogi nor such a disciple," said the woman.

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled.
But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him
their best.

And at last- tired, sleepy, and dusty- they reached Umballa City
Station.

"We abide here upon a law-suit," said the cultivator's wife to
Kim. "We lodge with my man's cousin's younger brother. There is room
also in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. Will- will he give me
a blessing?"

"O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the
night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have
been helped since the dawn!"

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

"To fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels-" the
husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

"Thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something
yet on his daughter's marriage-feast," said the woman crisply. "Let
him put their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I doubt not."

"Ay, I beg for him," said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under
shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali's Englishman
and deliver himself of the white stallion's pedigree.

"Now," said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner
courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, "I go away
for a while- to- to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad
till I return."

"Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?" The old man caught at
his wrist. "And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too
late to look to-night for the River?"

"Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on
the road- an hundred kos from Lahore already."

"Yea- and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and
terrible world."

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his
own and a few score thousand other folks fate slung round his neck.
Mahbub Ali's directions left him little doubt of the house in which
his Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the
Club, made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and
Kim slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed
grass close to the veranda. The house blazed with lights, and servants
moved about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver.
Presently forth came an Englishman, dressed in black and white,
humming a tune. It was too dark to see his face, so Kim,
beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

"Protector of the Poor!"

The man backed towards the voice.

"Mahbub Ali says-"

"Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?" He made no attempt to look for the
speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.

"The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established."

"What proof is there?" The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge
in the side of the drive.

"Mahbub Ali has given me this proof." Kim flipped the wad of
folded paper into the air, and it fell on the path beside the man, who
put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. When the
servant passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee- Kim could hear the
clink- and strode into the house, never turning round. Swiftly Kim
took up the money; but, for all his training, he was Irish enough by
birth to reckon silver the least part of any game. What he desired was
the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay
close in the grass and wormed nearer to the house.

He saw- Indian bungalows are open through and through- the
Englishman return to a small dressing-room, in a corner of the
veranda, that was half-office, littered with papers and
despatch-boxes, and sit down to study Mahbub Ali's message. His
face, by the full ray of the kerosene lamp, changed and darkened,
and Kim, used as every beggar must be to watching countenances, took
good note.

"Will! Will, dear!" called a woman's voice. "You ought to be in
the drawing-room. They'll be here in a minute."

The man still read intently.

"Will!" said the voice, five minutes later. "He's come. I can hear
the troopers in the drive."

The man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native
troopers behind it halted at the veranda, and a tall, black-haired
man, erect as an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young officer who
laughed pleasantly.

Flat on his belly lay Kim, almost touching the high wheels. His
man and the black stranger exchanged two sentences.

"Certainly, sir," said the young officer promptly. "Everything waits
while a horse is concerned."

"We shan't be more than twenty minutes," said Kim's man. "You can do
the honours- keep 'em amused, and all that."

"Tell one of the troopers to wait," said the tall man, and they both
passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled away.
Kim saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali's message, and heard the
voices- one low and deferential the other sharp and decisive.

"It isn't a question of weeks. It is a question of days- hours
almost," said the elder. "I'd been expecting it for some time, but
this"- he tapped Mahbub Ali's paper- "clinches it. Grogan's dining
here to-night, isn't he?"

"Yes, sir, and Macklin too."

"Very good. I'll speak to them myself. That matter will be
referred to the Council, of course, but this is a case where one is
justified in assuming that we take action at once. Warn the Pindi
and Peshawur brigades. It will disorganise all the summer reliefs, but
we can't help that. This comes of not smashing them thoroughly the
first time. Eight thousand should be enough."

"What about artillery, sir?"

"I must consult Macklin."

"Then it means war?"

"No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his
predecessor- "

"But C.25 may have lied."

"He bears out the other's information. Practically, they showed
their hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was a
chance of peace. Of course they used it to make themselves stronger.
Send off those telegrams at once- the new code, not the old- mine
and Wharton's. I don't think we need keep the ladies waiting any
longer. We can settle the rest over the cigars. I thought it was
coming. It's punishment- not war."

As the trooper cantered off Kim crawled round to the back of the
house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there would
be food- and information. The kitchen was crowded with excited
scullions, one of whom kicked him.

"Aie," said Kim, feigning tears. "I came only to wash dishes in
return for a bellyful."

"All Umballa is on the same errand. Get hence. They go in now with
the soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need strange
scullions to help us through a big dinner?"

"It is a very big dinner," said Kim, looking at the plates.

"Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-Lat
Sahib" (the Commander-in-Chief).

"Ho!" said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had
learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.

"And all that trouble," said he to himself, thinking as usual in
Hindustanee, "for a horse's pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come to
me to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have borne a
message it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The tall man said
that they will loose a great army to punish some one- somewhere- the
news goes to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also guns. Would I had
crept nearer. It is big news!"

He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother
discussing the family lawsuit in all its bearings with the
cultivator and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. After
the evening meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim felt very
much of a man as he pulled at the smooth cocoanut-shell, his legs
spread abroad in the moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from
time to time. His hosts were most polite; for the cultivator's wife
had told them of his vision of the Red Bull and of his probable
descent from another world. Moreover, the lama was a great and
venerable curiosity. The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut
Brahmin, dropped in later, and naturally started a theological
argument to impress the family. By creed, of course, they were all
on their priest's side, but the lama was the guest and the novelty.
His gentle kindliness, and his impressive Chinese quotations, that
sounded like spells, delighted them hugely; and in this sympathetic,
simple air he expanded like the Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking of
his life in the great hills of Suchzen, before, as he said, "I rose up
to seek enlightenment."

Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a
master-hand at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family
priest led him on to describe his methods; each giving the planets
names that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the
big stars sailed across the dark. The children of the house tugged
unrebuked at his rosary, and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids
looking at women as he talked of euduring snows, landslips, blocked
passes, the remote cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise,
and that wonderful upland road that leads at last into Great China
itself.

"How thinkest thou of this one?" said the cultivator aside to the
priest.

"A holy man- a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his
feet are upon the Way," was the answer. "And his methods of
nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure."

"Tell me," said Kim lazily, "whether I find my Red Bull on a green
field, as was promised me."

"What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?" the priest asked,
swelling with importance.

"Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May."

"Of what year?"

"I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the
great earthquake in Srinagur which is in Kashmir." This Kim had from
the woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball O'Hara. The
earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood a leading date
in the Punjab.

"Ai!" said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's supernatural
origin more certain. "Was not such an one's daughter born then- "

"And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years- all likely
boys," cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the circle in
the shadow.

"None reared in the knowledge," said the family priest, "forget
how the planets stood in their Houses upon that night." He began to
draw in the dust of the courtyard. "At least thou hast good claim to a
half of the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?"

"Upon a day," said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was
creating, "I shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a green
field, but first there will enter two men making all things ready."

"Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that
clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place.
Then begins the Sight. Two men- thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun,
leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two
men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, little
one."

He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again
in the dust mysterious signs- to the wonder of all save the lama, who,
with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

At the end of half an hour he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.

"Hm. Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to
make all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign
over against him is the sign of War and armed men."

"There was indeed a man of the Loodhiana Sikhs in the carriage
from Lahore," said the cultivator's wife hopefully.

"Tck! Armed men- many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?"
said the priest to Kim. "Thine is a red and an angry sign of War to be
loosed very soon."

"None- none," said the lama earnestly. "We seek only peace and our
River."

Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the
dressing-room. Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. "More than this
I cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy."

"And my River, my River," pleaded the lama. I had hoped his Bull
would lead us both to the River."

"Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother," the priest replied.
"Such things are not common."

Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on
departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly
three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many
blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

"Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from the
Wheel of Things," said the lama.

"Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who
would give us meat and shelter?" quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his
burden.

"Yonder is a small stream. Let us look," said the lama, and he led
from the white road across the fields; walking into a very
hornets'-nest of pariah dogs.

                                3


              "Yea, voice of every Soul that clung
               To Life that strove from rung to rung
               When Devadatta's rule was young,
                 The warm wind brings Kamakura."


Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a
market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for
Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.

"Such an one," said the lama, disregarding the dogs, "is impolite to
strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned by his
demeanour, my disciple."

"Ho, shameless beggars!" shouted the farmer. "Begone! Get hence!"

"We go," the lama returned, with quiet dignity. "We go from these
unblessed fields."

"Ah," said Kim, sucking in his breath. "If the next crop fails, thou
canst only blame thy own tongue."

The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. "The land is full of
beggars," he began, half apologetically.

"And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O
Mali?" said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least
likes. "All we sought was to look at that river beyond the field
there."

"River, forsooth!" the man snorted. "What city do ye hail from not
to know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow, and I pay for
the water as though it were molten silver. There is a branch of a
river beyond. But if ye need water I can give that- and milk."

"Nay, we will go to the river," said the lama, striding out.

"Milk and a meal," the man stammered, as he looked at the strange
tall figure. "I- I would not draw evil upon myself- or my crops; but
beggars are so many in these hard days."

"Take notice," the lama turned to Kim. "He was led to speak
harshly by the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he
becomes courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be
blessed. Beware not to judge men too hastily, O farmer."

"I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to
byre," said Kim to the abashed man. "Is he not wise and holy? I am his
disciple."

He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the
narrow field-borders with great dignity.

"There is no pride," said the lama, after a pause, "there is no
pride among such as follow the Middle Way."

"But thou hast said he was low caste and discourteous."

"Low caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not?
Afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offense.
Moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he does
not tread the way of deliverance." He halted at a little runlet
among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank.

"Now, how wilt thou know thy River?" said Kim, squatting in the
shade of some tall sugar-cane.

"When I find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. This, I
feel, is not the place. O littlest among the waters, if only thou
couldst tell me where runs my River! But be thou blessed to make the
fields bear!"

"Look! Look!" Kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. A
yellow and brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the
bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still- a big
cobra with fixed, lidless eyes.

"I have no stick- I have no stick," said Kim. "I will get me one and
break his back."

"Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are- a life ascending or
descending- very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul have
done that is cast into this shape."

"I hate all snakes," said Kim. No native training can quench the
white man's horror of the Serpent.

"Let him live out his life." The coiled thing hissed and half opened
its hood. "May thy release come soon, brother," the lama continued
placidly. "Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my River?"

"Never have I seen such a man as thou art," Kim whispered,
overwhelmed. "Do the very snakes understand thy talk?"

"Who knows?" He passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head.
It flattened itself among the dusty coils.

"Come thou!" he called over his shoulder.

"Not I," said Kim. "I go round."

"Come. He does no hurt."

Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some droned
Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed and bounded
across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no sign.

"Never have I seen such a man." Kim wiped the sweat from his
forehead. "And now, whither go we?"

"That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger- far from my
own place. But that the rel-carriage fills my head with noises of
devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now.... Yet by so going we may
miss the River. Let us find another river."

Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year-
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and
nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse
of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the
lama replying to the vollied questions with an unswerving
simplicity. They sought a River- a River of miraculous healing. Had
any one knowledge of such a stream? Sometimes men laughed, but more
often heard the story out to the end and offered them a place in the
shade, a drink of milk, and a meal. The women were always kind, and
the little children as children are the world over, alternately shy
and venturesome. Evening found them at rest under the village tree
of a mud-walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the
cattle came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the
day's last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens
round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the staple
crops.

He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining
strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm
cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening
ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the
village priest.

Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of
Lahore, of railway travel, and such-like city things, while the men
talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud.

"I cannot fathom it," said the headman at last to the priest. "How
readest thou this talk?" The lama, his tale told, was silently telling
his beads.

"He is a Seeker," the priest answered. "The land is full of such.
Remember him who came only last month- the faquir with the tortoise?"

"Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself appeared
in a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-pyre if he
journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no god who is within my
knowledge."

"Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad," the
smooth-shaven priest replied. "Hear me." He turned to the lama. "Three
kos (six miles) to the westward runs the great road to Calcutta."

"But I would go to Benares- to Benares."

"And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of Hind.
Now my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow. Then take
the road" (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) "and test each stream
that it overpasses; for, as I understand the virtue of thy River
lies neither in one pool nor place, but throughout its length. Then,
if thy Gods will, be assured that thou wilt come upon thy freedom."

"That is well said." The lama was much impressed by the plan. "We
will begin to-morrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such
a near road." A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the
sentence. Even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an
evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple, eager face and
doubt him long.

"Seest thou my chela?" he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with
an important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with courtesy.

"I see- and hear." The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting
to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a fire.

"He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a Red
Bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He is, I
think, not altogether of this world. He was sent of a sudden to aid me
in this search, and his name is Friend of all the World."

The priest smiled. "Ho there, Friend of all the World," he cried
across the sharp-smelling smoke, "what art thou?"

"This Holy One's disciple," said Kim.

"He says thou art a but" (a spirit).

"Can buts eat?" said Kim, with a twinkle. "For I am hungry."

"It is no jest," cried the lama. "A certain astrologer of that
city whose name I have forgotten-"

"That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last
night," Kim whispered to the priest.

"Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my
chela should find his desire within two days. But what said he of
the meaning of the stars, Friend of all the World?"

Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village graybeards.

"The meaning of my Star is War," he replied pompously.

Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the
brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have
lain down, Kim's white blood set him upon his feet.

"Ay, War," he answered.

"That is a sure prophecy," rumbled a deep voice. "For there is
always war along the Border- as I know."

It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the
days of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry
regiment. The Government had given him a good holding in the
village, and though the demands of his sons, now gray-bearded officers
on their own account, had impoverished him, he was still a person of
consequence. English officials- Deputy Commissioners even- turned
aside from the main road to visit him, and on those occasions he
dressed himself in the uniform of ancient days, and stood up like a
ramrod.

"But this shall be a great war- a war of eight thousand," Kim's
voice shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing himself.

"Redcoats or our own regiments?" the old man snapped, as though he
were asking an equal. His tone made men respect Kim.

"Redcoats," said Kim at a venture. "Redcoats and guns."

"But- but the astrologer said no word of this," cried the lama,
snuffing prodigiously in his excitement.

"But I know. The word has come to me, who am this Holy One's
disciple. There will rise a war- a war of eight thousand redcoats.
From Pindi and Peshawur they will be drawn. This is sure."

"The boy has heard bazar-talk," said the priest.

"But he was always by my side," said the lama. How should he know? I
did not know."

"He will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead," muttered
the priest to the headman. "What new trick is this?"

"A sign. Give me a sign," thundered the old soldier suddenly. "If
there were war my sons would have told me."

"When all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. But it is a
long road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things lie."
Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the
letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended
to know more than he knew. But now he was playing for larger things-
the sheer excitement and the sense of power. He drew a new breath
and went on.

"Old man, give me a sign. Do underlings order the goings of eight
thousand redcoats- with guns?"

"No." Still the old man answered as though Kim were an equal.

"Dost thou know who He is then that gives the order?"

"I have seen Him."

"To know again?"

"I have known Him since he was a lieutenant in the topkhana" (the
Artillery).

"A tall man. A tall man with black hair, walking thus?" Kim took a
few paces in a stiff, wooden style.

"Ay. But that anyone may have seen." The crowd were breathless-still
through all this talk.

"That is true," said Kim. "But I will say more. Look now. First
the great man walks thus. Then He thinks thus. (Kim drew a
forefinger over his forehead and downwards till it came to rest by the
angle of the jaw.) Anon He twitches his fingers thus. Anon He
thrusts his hat under his left armpit." Kim illustrated the motion and
stood like a stork.

The old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd
shivered.

"So- so- so. But what does He when He is about to give an order?"

"He rubs the skin at the back of his neck- thus. Then falls one
finger on the table and he makes a small sniffing noise through his
nose. Then He speaks, saying: 'Loose such and such a regiment. Call
out such guns.'"

The old man rose stiffly and saluted.

"'For'"- Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching
sentences he had heard in the dressing-room at Umballa- "'For,' says
He, 'we should have done this long ago. It is not war- it is a
chastisement. Snff!'"

"Enough. I believe. I have seen Him thus in the smoke of battles.
Seen and heard. It is He!"

"I saw no smoke"- Kim's voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the
wayside fortune-teller. "I saw this in darkness. First came a man to
make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He, standing in a
ring of light. The rest followed as I have said. Old man, have I
spoken truth?"

"It is He. Past all doubt it is He."

The crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at
the old man, still at attention, and ragged Kim against the purple
twilight.

"Said I not- said I not he was from the other world?" cried the lama
proudly. "He is the Friend of all the World. He is the Friend of the
Stars!"

"At least it does not concern us," a man cried."O thou young
soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, I have a
red-spotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know- "

"Or I care," said Kim. "My Stars do not concern themselves with
thy cattle."

"Nay, but she is very sick," a woman struck in. "My man is a
buffalo, or he would have chosen his words better. Tell me if she
recover?"

Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the
play; but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the
faquirs by the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing
human nature.

The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly- a dry and
blighting smile.

"Is there no priest then in the village? I thought I had seen a
great one even now," cried Kim.

"Ay- but- " the woman began.

"But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful
of thanks." The shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted
couple in the village. "It is not well to cheat the temples. Give a
young calf to thy own priest, and, unless thy gods are angry past
recall, she will give milk within a month."

"A master-beggar art thou," purred the priest approvingly. "Not
the cunning of forty years could have done better. Surely thou hast
made the old man rich?"

"A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms," Kim
retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious- "does one
grow rich on that? And, as thou canst see, he is mad. But it serves me
while I learn the road at least."

He knew what the faquirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they
talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their
lewd disciples.

"Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? It may be
treasure."

"He is mad- many times mad. There is nothing else."

Here the old soldier hobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his
hospitality for the night. The priest recommended him to do so, but
insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the
temple- at which the lama smiled guilelessly. Kim glanced from one
face to the other, and drew his own conclusions.

"Where is the money?" he whispered, beckoning the old man off into
the darkness.

"In my bosom. Where else?"

"Give it me. Quietly and swiftly give it me."

"But why? Here is no ticket to buy."

"Am I thy chela, or am I not? Do I not safeguard thy old feet
about the ways? Give me the money and at dawn I will return it." He
slipped his hand above the lama's girdle and brought away the purse.

"Be it so- be it so." The old man nodded his head. "This is a
great and terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive in
it."

Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was
quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the
old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his
dry knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty years in
their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.

"Certainly the air of this country is good," said the lama. "I sleep
lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad
day. Even now I am heavy."

"Drink a draught of hot milk," said Kim, who had carried not a few
such remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. "It is time to
take the road again."

"The long road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind," said the
lama gaily. "Let us go. But how thinkest thou, chela, to recompense
these people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness?
Truly they are but-parast, but in other lives, may be, they will
receive enlightenment. A rupee to the temple? The thing within is no
more than stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must
acknowledge when and where it is good."

"Holy One, hast thou ever taken the road alone?" Kim looked up
sharply, like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.

"Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathankot- from Kulu, where my first
chela died. When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men
were well-disposed throughout all the Hills."

"It is otherwise in Hind," said Kim drily. "Their Gods are
many-armed and malignant. Let them alone."

"I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World-
thou and thy yellow man." The old soldier ambled up the village
street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a gaunt, scissor-hocked pony.
"Last night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried
heart, and it was as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in
the air. I smell it. See! I have brought my sword."

He sat long-legged on the little beast, with his big sword at his
side- hand dropped on the pommel- staring fiercely over the flat lands
towards the north. "Tell me again how He showed in thy vision. Come up
and sit behind me. The beast will carry two."

"I am this Holy One's disciple," said Kim, as they cleared the
village-gate. The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but
the priest's farewell was cold and distant. He had wasted some opium
on a man who carried no money.

"That is well spoken. I am not much used to holy men, but respect is
always good. There is no respect in these days- not even when a
Commissioner Sahib comes to see me. But why should one whose Star
leads him to war follow a holy man?"

"But he is a holy man," said Kim earnestly. "In truth, and in talk
and in act, holy. He is not like the others. I have never seen such an
one. We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars."

"Thou art not, that I can see; but I do not know that other. He
marches well, though."

The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long,
easy, camel-like strides. He was deep in meditation, mechanically
clicking his rosary.

They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the
flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the
snow-capped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work
in the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of
ploughmen behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. Even
the pony felt the good influence and almost broke into a trot as Kim
laid a hand on the stirrup-leather.

"It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine," said
the lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.

The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first
time was aware of him.

"Seekest thou the River also?" said he, turning.

"The day is new," was the reply. "What need of a river save to water
at before sundown? I come to show thee a short lane to the Big Road."

"That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will; but why
the sword?"

The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game
of make-believe.

"The sword," he said, fumbling it." Oh, that was a fancy of mine- an
old man's fancy. Truly the police orders are that no man must bear
weapons throughout Hind, but"- he cheered up and slapped the hilt-
"all the constabeels hereabout know me."

"It is not a good fancy," said the lama. "What profit to kill men?"

"Very little- as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain
it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. I do not speak
without knowledge who have seen the land from Delhi south awash with
blood."

"What madness was that, then?"

"The Gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate
into all the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was
the first evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands.
But they chose to kill the Sahibs' wives and children. Then came the
Sahibs from over the sea and called them to most strict account."

"Some such rumour, I believe, reached me once long ago. They
called it the Black Year, as I remember."

"What manner of life hast thou led, not to know The Year? A rumour
indeed! All earth knew, and trembled."

"Our earth never shook but once- upon the day that the Excellent One
received Enlightenment."

"Umph! I saw Delhi shake at least; and Delhi is the navel of the
world."

"So they turned against women and children? That was a bad deed, for
which the punishment cannot be avoided."

"Many strove to do so, but with very small profit. I was then in a
regiment of cavalry. It broke. Of six hundred and eighty sabres
stood fast to their salt- how many think you? Three. Of whom I was
one."

"The greater merit."

"Merit! We did not consider it merit in those days. My people, my
friends, my brothers fell from me. They said: 'The time of the English
is accomplished. Let each strike out a little holding for himself.'
But I had talked with the men of Sobraon, of Chillianwallah, of
Moodkee and Ferozeshah. I said: 'Abide a little and the wind turns.
There is no blessing in this work.' those days I rode seventy miles
with an English mem-sahib and her babe on my saddle-bow. (Wow! That
was a horse fit for a man!) I placed them in safety, and back came I
to my officer- the one that was not killed of our five. 'Give me
work,' said I, 'for I am an outcast among my own kin, and my
cousin's blood is wet on my sabre.' 'Be content.' said he. 'There is
great work forward. When this madness is over there is a recompense.'"

"Ay, there is a recompense when the madness is over, surely?" the
lama muttered half to himself.

"They did not hang medals in those days on all who by accident had
heard a gun fired. No! In nineteen pitched battles was I; in
six-and-forty skirmishes of horse; and in small affairs without
number. Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of
an Order, for my captains who are now generals, remembered me when the
Kaiser-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign, and all the
land rejoiced. They said: 'Give him the order of Berittish India.' I
carry it upon my neck now. I have also my jaghir (holding) from the
hands of the State- a free gift to me and mine. The men of the old
days- they are now Commissioners- come riding to me through the crops-
high upon horses so that all the village sees- and we talk out the old
skirmishes, one dead man's name leading to another."

"And after?" said the lama.

"Oh, afterwards they go away, but not before my village has seen."

"And at the last what wilt thou do?"

"At the last I shall die."

"And after?"

"Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers: I
do not think they will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my
long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with
complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently
sent for in haste, as our colonel used to send for slack-jawed
down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the
Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can
drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no
less than three- ressaldar-majors all- in the regiments."

"And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to
life- from despair to despair," said the lama below his breath,
"hot, uneasy, snatching."

Ay," the old soldier chuckled. "Three ressaldar-majors in three
regiments. Gamblers a little, but so am I. They must be well
mounted; and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took
women. Well, well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It
is a well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask
save at the lance's point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and
they feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a
toothless old ape."

"Hast thou never desired any other thing?"

"Yes- yes- a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging
knee once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that
makes a man. Oh, the old days- the good days of my strength!"

"That strength is weakness."

"It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it
otherwise," the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into
the pony's lean flank.

"But I know a River of great healing."

"I have drunk Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me was
a flux, and no sort of strength."

"It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of
sin. Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not know
thy life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous.
Thou hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to
give, in that Black Year of which I now remember other tales. Enter
now upon the Middle Way, which is the path to Freedom. Hear the Most
Excellent Law, and do not follow dreams."

"Speak then, old man," the soldier smiled, half saluting. "We be all
babblers at our age."

The lama squatted under the shade of a mango tree, whose shadow
played checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony;
and Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch
of the twisted roots.

There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of
doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and
impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier
slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the
reins round his wrist. The lama's voice faltered- the periods
lengthened. Kim was busy watching a gray squirrel. When the little
scolding bunch of fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared,
preacher and audience were fast asleep, the old officer's strong-cut
head pillowed on his arm, the lama's thrown back against the tree
bole, where it showed like yellow ivory. A naked child toddled up,
stared, and, moved by some quick impulse of reverence made a solemn
little obeisance before the lama- only the child was so short and
fat that it toppled over sideways, and Kim laughed at the sprawling,
chubby legs. The child, seared and indignant, yelled aloud.

"Hai! Hai!" said the soldier leaping to his feet. "What is it?
What orders?... It is... a child! I dreamed it was an alarm. Little
one- little one- do not cry. Have I slept? That was discourteous
indeed!"

"I fear! I am afraid!" roared the child.

"What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever
make a soldier, Princeling?"

The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child,
clicked his rosary.

"What is that?" said the child, stopping a yell midway. "I have
never seen such things. Give them me."

"Aha," said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the
grass:


     "This is a handful of cardamoms,
        This is a lump of ghi.
      This is millet and chillies and rice,
        A supper for thee and me!"


The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing
beads.

"Oho!" said the old soldier. "Whence had thou that song, despiser of
this world?"

"I learned it in Pathankot- sitting on a door-step," said the lama
shyly. "It is good to be kind to babes."

"As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that
marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light,
stumbling-blocks upon the way. Do children drop from heaven in thy
country? Is it the Way to sing them songs?"

"No man is all perfect," said the lama gravely, recoiling the
rosary. "Run now to thy mother, little one."

"Hear him!" said the soldier to Kim. "He is ashamed for that he
has made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in
thee, my brother. Hai, child!" He threw it a pice. "Sweetmeats are
always sweet." And as the little figure capered away into the
sunshine: "They grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I
slept in the midst of thy preaching. Forgive me."

"We be two old men," said the lama." The fault is mine. I listened
to thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the
next."

"Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And
that song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the
song of Nikal Seyn before Delhi- the old song."

And they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's
high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn
wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn (Nicholson)- the song that
men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama
listened with deep interest.

"Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead- he died before Delhi! Lances of North take
vengeance for Nikal Seyn." He quavered it out to the end, marking
the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony's rump.

"And now we come to the Big Road," said he, after receiving the
compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. "It is long
since I have ridden this way, but thy boy's talk stirred me. See, Holy
One- the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most
part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road-
all hard- takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages
the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are
only country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road
for the heavy carts- grain and cotton and timber, bhoosa, lime and
hides. A man goes in safety here- for at every few kos is a
police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners (I myself
would patrol it with cavalry- young recruits under a strong
captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All castes and
kinds of men move here. Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and
tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters- all the world
going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn
like a log after a flood."

And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs
straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred
miles- such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.
They looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white
breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed
police-station opposite.

"Who bears arms against the law?" a constable called out laughingly,
as he caught sight of the soldier's sword. "Are not the police
enough to destroy evil-doers?"

"It was because of the police I bought it," was the answer. "Does
all go well in Hind?"

"Ressaldar Sahib, all goes well."

"I am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the
bank and draws it in again. Ay, this is the road of Hindustan. All men
come by this way...."

"Son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to
scratch thy back upon? Father of all the daughters of shame and
husband of ten thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a
devil, being led thereto by her mother; thy aunts have never had a
nose for seven generations! Thy sister- What owl's folly told thee
to draw thy carts across the road? A broken wheel? Then take a
broken head and put the two together at leisure!"

The voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of
dust fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. A thin, high
Kattiwar mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam,
snorting and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of
a shouting man. He was tall and gray-bearded, sitting the almost mad
beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between
plunges.

The old man's face lit with pride. "My child!" said he briefly,
and strove to rein the pony's neck to a fitting arch.

"Am I to be beaten before the police?" cried the carter. "Justice! I
will have Justice- "

"Am I to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand
sacks under a young horse's nose? That is the way to ruin a mare."

"He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,"
said the old man. The carter ran under the wheels of his cart and
thence threatened all sorts of vengeance.

"They are strong men, thy sons," said the policeman serenely,
picking his teeth.

The horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came
on at a canter.

"My father!" He reined back ten yards and dismounted.

The old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as
do father and son in the East.

                                 4


               Good Luck, she is never a lady,
               But the cursedest quean alive.
               Tricksy, wincing, and jady-
               Kittle to lead or drive.
               Greet her- she hailing a stranger!
               Meet her- she's busking to leave!
               Let her alone for a shrew to the bone
               And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!
                 Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!
                 Give or hold at your will
                 If I've no care for Fortune,
                 Fortune must follow me still!
                                  " THE  WISHING  CAPS "


Then, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest
under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.

"Let us go on. The River is not here."

"Hai mai? Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not
run away. Patience, and he will give us a dole."

"That," said the old soldier suddenly, "is the Friend of the
Stars. He brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man
Himself, in a vision, giving orders for the war."

"Hm!" said his son, all deep in his broad chest. "He came by a
bazar-rumour and made profit of it."

His father laughed. "At least he did not ride to me begging for a
new charger and the Gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers'
regiments also under orders?"

"I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case- "

"In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts
all! But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is
needed there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the
marching. Let us see- let us see." He thrummed on the pommel.

"This is no place to cast thy accounts in, my father. Let us go to
thy house."

"At least pay the boy then: I have no pice with me, and he brought
auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as
thou hast said."

"Nay, as I know, the war," returned Kim composedly.

"Eh?" said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.

"My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news-
bear witness we brought the news, and now we go." Kim half-crooked his
hand at his side.

The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling
something about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and
would feed them well for some days. The lama, seeing the flash of
the metal, droned a blessing.

"Go thy way, Friend of all the World," piped the old soldier,
wheeling his scrawny mount. "For once in all my days I have met a true
prophet- who was not in the Army."

Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as
the younger.

A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the
road. He had seen the money pass.

"Halt!" he cried in impressive English. "Know ye not that there is a
takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter
the road from this side-road. It is the order of the Sirkar, and the
money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the
ways."

"And the bellies of the police," said Kim, skipping out of arm's
reach. "Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came
from the nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law. Hast thou ever
heard the name of thy brother?"

"And who was he? Leave the boy alone," cried a senior constable,
immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the
veranda.

"He took a label from a bottle of belaitee-pani (soda-water), and,
affixing it to a bridge, collected taxes for a month from those who
passed, saying that it was the Sirkar's order. Then came an Englishman
and broke his head. Ah, brother, I am a town-crow, not a
village-crow!"

The policeman drew back abashed, and Kim hooted at him all down
the road.

"Was there ever such a disciple as I?" he cried merrily to the lama.
"All earth would have picked thy bones within ten mile of Lahore
city if I had not guarded thee."

"I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes,
or sometimes an evil imp," said the lama, smiling slowly.

"I am thy chela." Kim dropped into step at his side- that
indescribable gait of the long-distance tramp all the world over.

"Now let us walk," muttered the lama, and to the click of his rosary
they walked in silence mile upon mile. The lama, as usual, was deep in
meditation, but Kim's bright eyes were open wide. This broad,
smiling river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the
cramped and crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new
sights at every stride- castes he knew and castes that were altogether
out of his experience.

They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with
baskets of lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean
dogs sniffing at their heels. These people kept their own side of
the road, moving at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes
gave them ample room; for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behind them,
walking wide and stiffly across the strong shadows, the memory of
his leg-irons still on him, strode one newly released from the jail;
his full stomach and shiny skin to prove that the Government fed its
prisoners better than most honest men could feed themselves. Kim
knew that walk well, and made broad jest of it as they passed. Then an
Akali, a wild-eyed, wild-haired Sikh devotee in the blue-checked
clothes of his faith, with polished-steel quoits glistening on the
cone of his tall blue turban, stalked past, returning from a visit
to one of the independent Sikh States, where he had been singing the
ancient glories of the Khalsa to College-trained princelings in
top-boots and white-cord breeches. Kim was careful not to irritate
that man; for the Akali's temper is short and his arm quick. Here
and there they met or were overtaken by the gaily dressed crowds of
whole villages turning out to some local fair; the women, with their
babes on their hips, walking behind the men, the older boys prancing
on sticks of sugar-cane, dragging rude brass models of locomotives
such as they sell for a halfpenny, or flashing the sun into the eyes
of their betters from cheap toy mirrors. One could see at a glance
what each had bought; and if there were any doubt it needed only to
watch the wives comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the newly
purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the North-West. These
merry-makers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and stopping
to haggle with sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before one of
the wayside shrines- sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman- which the
low caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A solid
line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in
haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a
chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars- the women who
have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under
their charge- a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed,
blue-petticoated clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a
job, and wasting no time by the road. They belong to the caste whose
men do not count, and they walked with squared elbows, swinging
hips, and heads on high, as suits women who carry heavy weights. A
little later a marriage procession would strike into the Grand Trunk
with music and shoutings, and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger
even than the reek of the dust. One could see the bride's litter, a
blur of red and tinsel, staggering through the haze, while the
bridegroom's bewreathed pony turned aside to snatch a mouthful from
a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim would join the Kentish-fire of good
wishes and bad jokes, wishing the couple a hundred sons and no
daughters, as the saying is. Still more interesting and more to be
shouted over it was when a strolling juggler with some half-trained
monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman who tied goats' horns
to her feet, and with these danced on a slack-rope, set the horses
to shying and the women to shrill, long-drawn quavers of amazement.

The lama never raised his eyes. He did not note the money-lender
on his goose-rumped pony, hastening along to collect the cruel
interest; or the long-shouting, deep-voiced little mob- still in
military formation- of native soldiers on leave, rejoicing to be rid
of their breeches and puttees, and saying the most outrageous things
to the most respectable women in sight. Even the seller of
Ganges-water he did not see, and Kim expected that he would at least
buy a bottle of that precious stuff. He looked steadily at the ground,
and strode as steadily hour after hour, his soul busied elsewhere. But
Kim was in the seventh heaven of joy. The Grand Trunk at this point
was built on an embankment to guard against winter floods from the
foothills, so that one walked, as it were, a little above the country,
along a stately corridor, seeing all India spread out to left and
right. It was beautiful to behold the many-yoked grain and cotton
waggons crawling over the country-roads: one could hear their axles,
complaining a mile away, coming nearer, till with shouts and yells and
bad words they climbed up the steep incline and plunged on to the hard
main road, carter reviling carter. It was equally beautiful to watch
the people, little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and
saffron, turning aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and
growing small by twos and threes across the level plain. Kim felt
these things, though he could not give tongue to his feelings, and
so contented himself with buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the
pith generously about his path. From time to time the lama took snuff,
and at last Kim could endure the silence no longer.

"This is a good land- the land of the South!" said he. "The air is
good; the water is good. Eh?"

"And they are all bound upon the Wheel," said the lama. "Bound
from life after life. To none of these has the Way been shown." He
shook himself back to this world.

"And now we have walked a weary way," said Kim. "Surely we shall
soon come to a parao (a resting-place). Shall we stay there? Look, the
sun is sloping."

"Who will receive us this evening?"

"That is all one. This country is full of good folk. Besides"- he
sunk his voice beneath a whisper- "we have money."

The crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked
the end of their day's journey. A line of stalls selling very simple
food and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police-station, a well, a
horse-trough, a few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground
dotted with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a parao on
the Grand Trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows- both hungry.

By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the
lower branches of the mango trees; the parakeets and doves were coming
home in their hundreds; the chattering, gray-backed Seven Sisters,
talking over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and
threes almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and
scufflings in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out
on the night-picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together,
painted for an instant the faces and the cart-wheels and the bullocks'
horns as red as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of
the air, drawing a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue,
across the face of the country, and bringing out, keen and distinct,
the smell of wood-smoke and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes
cooked on ashes. The evening patrol hurried out of the
police-station with important coughings and reiterated orders; and a
live charcoal ball in the cup of a wayside carter's hookah glowed
red while Kim's eye mechanically watched the last flicker of the sun
on the brass tweezers.

The life of the parao was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a
small scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you
only allow time, will bring you everything that a simple man needs.

His wants were few, because, since the lama had no caste scruples,
cooked food from the nearest stall would serve; but, for luxury's
sake, Kim bought a handful of dung-cakes to build a fire. All about,
coming and going round the little flames, men cried for oil, or grain,
or sweetmeats, or tobacco, jostling one another while they waited
their turn at the well; and under the men's voices you heard from
halted, shuttered carts the high squeals and giggles of women whose
faces should not be seen in public.

Nowadays, well-educated natives are of opinion that when their
womenfolk travel- and they visit a good deal- it is better to take
them quickly by rail in a properly screened compartment; and that
custom is spreading. But there are always those of the old rock who
hold by the use of their forefathers; and, above all, there are always
the old women- more conservative than the men- who toward the end of
their days go a pilgrimage. They, being withered and undesirable, do
not, under certain circumstances, object to unveiling. After their
long seclusion, during which they have always been in business touch
with a thousand outside interests, they love the bustle and stir of
the open road, the gatherings at the shrines, and the infinite
possibilities of gossip with like-minded dowagers. Very often it suits
a long-suffering family that a strong-tongued, iron-willed old lady
should disport herself about India in this fashion; for certainly
pilgrimage is grateful to the Gods. So all about India, in the most
remote places, as in the most public, you find some knot of grizzled
servitors in nominal charge of an old lady who is more or less
curtained and hid away in a bullock-cart. Such men are staid and
discreet, and when a European or a high-caste native is near will
net their charge with most elaborate precautions; but in the
ordinary haphazard chances of pilgrimage the precautions are not
taken. The old lady is, after all, intensely human, and lives to
look upon life.

Kim marked down a gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with
a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had
just been drawn into the parao. Eight men made its retinue, and two of
the eight were armed with rusty sabres- sure signs that they
followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear
arms. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, and
what to a European would have been bad language, came from behind
the curtains. Here was evidently a woman used to command.

Kim looked over the retinue critically. Half of them were
thin-legged, gray-bearded Ooryas from down country. The other half
were duffle-clad, felt-hatted hillmen of the North: and that mixture
told its own tale, even if he had not overheard the incessant sparring
between the two divisions. The old lady was going south on a visit-
probably to a rich relative, most probably to a son-in-law, who had
sent up an escort as a mark of respect. The hillmen would be of her
own people- Kulu or Kangra folk. It was quite clear that she was not
taking her daughter down to be wedded, or the curtains would have been
laced home and the guard would have allowed no one near the car. A
merry and a high-spirited dame, thought Kim, balancing the dung-cake
in one hand, the cooked food in the other, and piloting the lama
with a nudging shoulder. Something might be made out of the meeting.
The lama would give him no help, but, as a conscientious chela, Kim
was delighted to beg for two.

He built his fire as close to the cart as he dared, waiting for
one of the escort to order him away. The lama dropped wearily to the
ground, much as a heavy fruit-eating bat cowers, and returned to his
rosary.

"Stand farther off, beggar!" The order was shouted in broken
Hindustanee by one of the hillmen.

"Huh! It is only a pahari" (a hillman), said Kim over his
shoulder. "Since when have the hill-asses owned all Hindustan?"

The retort was a swift and brilliant sketch of Kim's pedigree for
three generations.

"Ah!" Kim's voice was sweeter than ever, as he broke the dung-cake
into fit pieces. "In my country we call that the beginning of
love-talk."

A harsh, thin cackle behind the curtains put the hillman on his
mettle for a second shot.

"Not so bad- not so bad," said Kim with calm. "But have a care, my
brother, lest we- we, I say- be minded to give a curse or so in
return. And our curses have the knack of biting home."

The Ooryas laughed; the hillman sprang forward threateningly; the
lama suddenly raised his head, bringing his huge tam-o'-shanter cap
into the full light of Kim's new-started fire.

"What is it?" said he.

The man halted as though struck to stone. "I- I- am saved from a
great sin," he stammered.

"The foreigner has found him a priest at last," whispered one of the
Ooryas.

"Hai! Why is that beggar-brat not well beaten?" the old woman cried.

The hillman drew back to the cart and whispered something to the
curtain. There was dead silence, then a muttering.

"This goes well," thought Kim, pretending neither to see nor hear.

"When- when- he has eaten?"- the hillman fawned on Kim -"it- it is
requested that the Holy One will do the honour to talk to one who
would speak to him."

"After he has eaten he will sleep," Kim returned loftily. He could
not quite see what new turn the game had taken, but stood resolute
to profit by it. "Now, I will get him his food." The last sentence,
spoken loudly, ended with a sigh as of faintness.

"I- I myself and the others of my people will look to that- if it is
permitted."

"It is permitted," said Kim, more loftily than ever. "Holy One,
these people will bring us food."

"The land is good. All the country of the South is good- a great and
a terrible world," mumbled the lama drowsily.

"Let him sleep," said Kim, "but look to it that we are well fed when
he wakes. He is a very holy man."

Again one of the Ooryas said something contemptuously.

"He is not a faquir. He is not a down-country beggar," Kim went on
severely, addressing the stars. "He is the most holy of holy men. He
is above all castes. I am his chela."

"Come here!" said the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and Kim
came, conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. One
skinny brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart,
and the talk went this way:

"Who is that one?"

"An exceedingly holy one. He comes from far off. He comes from
Tibet."

"Where in Tibet?"

"From behind the snows- from a very far place. He knows the stars;
he makes horoscopes; he reads nativities. But he does not do this
for money. He does it for kindness and great charity. I am his
disciple. I am called also the Friend of the Stars."

"Thou art no hillman."

"Ask him. He will tell thee I was sent to him from the stars to show
him an end to his pilgrimage."

"Humph! Consider, brat, that I am an old woman and not altogether
a fool. Lamas I know, and to these I give reverence, but thou art no
more a lawful chela than this my finger is the pole of this waggon.
Thou art a casteless Hindu- a bold and unblushing beggar, attached,
belike, to the Holy One for the sake of gain."

"Do we not all work for gain?" Kim changed his tone promptly to
match that altered voice. "I have heard"- this was a bow drawn at a
venture- "I have heard-"

"What hast thou heard?" she snapped, rapping with the finger.

"Nothing that I well remember, but some talk in the bazars, which is
doubtless a lie, that even Rajahs- small hill Rajahs- "

"But none the less of good Rajput blood."

"Assuredly of good blood. That these even sell the more comely of
their womenfolk for gain. Down south they sell them- to zemindars
and such-all of Oudh."

If there be one thing in the world that the small hill Rajahs deny
it is just this charge; but it happens to be one thing that the bazars
believe, when they discuss the mysterious slave-traffics of India. The
old lady explained to Kim, in a tense, indignant whisper, precisely
what manner and fashion of malignant liar he was. Had Kim hinted
this when she was a girl, he would have been pommelled to death that
same evening by an elephant. This was perfectly true.

"Ahai! I am only a beggar's brat, as the Eye of Beauty has said," he
wailed in extravagant terror.

"Eye of Beauty, forsooth! Who am I that thou shouldst fling
beggar-endearments at me?" And yet she laughed at the long-forgotten
word. "Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without
truth. Ay, thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up
and down Hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the
land, and be made a mock by beggars."

"Great Queen," said Kim promptly, for he heard her shaking with
indignation, "I am even what the Great Queen says I am; but none the
less is my master holy. He has not yet heard the Great Queen's order
that- "

"Order? I order a Holy One- a Teacher of the Law- to come and
speak to a woman? Never!"

"Pity my stupidity. I thought it was given as an order- "

"It was not. It was a petition. Does this make all clear?"

A silver coin clicked on the edge of the cart. Kim took it and
salaamed profoundly. The old lady recognised that, as the eyes and the
ears of the lama, he was to be propitiated.

"I am but the Holy One's disciple. When he has eaten perhaps he will
come."

"Oh, villain and shameless rogue!" The jewelled forefinger shook
itself at him reprovingly; but he could hear the old lady's chuckle.

"Nay, what is it?" he said, dropping into his most caressing and
confidential tone- the one, he well knew, that few could resist.
"Is- is there any need of a son in thy family? Speak freely, for we
priests-" That last was a direct plagiarism from a faquir by the
Taksali Gate.

"We priests! Thou art not yet old enough to- " She checked the
joke with another laugh. "Believe me, now and again, we women, O
priest, think of other matters than sons. Moreover, my daughter has
borne her man-child."

"Two arrows in the quiver are better than one; and three are
better still." Kim quoted the proverb with a meditative cough, looking
discreetly earthward.

"True- oh, true. But perhaps that will come. Certainly those
down-country Brahmins are utterly useless. I sent gifts and monies and
gifts again to them and they prophesied."

"Ah," drawled Kim, with infinite contempt, "they prophesied!" A
professional could have done no better.

"And it was not till I remembered my own Gods that my prayers were
heard. I chose an auspicious hour, and- perhaps thy Holy One has heard
of the Abbot of the Lung-Cho lamassery. It was to him I put the
matter, and behold in the due time all came about as I desired. The
Brahmin in the house of the father of my daughter's son has since said
that it was through his prayers- which is a little error that I will
explain to him when we reach our journey's end. And so afterwards I go
to Buddh Gaya, to make shraddha for the father of my children."

"Thither go we."

"Doubly auspicious," chirruped the old lady. "A second son at
least!"

"O Friend of all the World!" The lama had waked, and, simply as a
child bewildered in a strange bed, called for Kim.

"I come! I come, Holy One!" He dashed to the fire, where he found
the lama already surrounded by dishes of food, the hillmen visibly
adoring him and the Southerners looking sourly.

"Go back! Withdraw!" Kim cried. "Do we eat publicly like dogs?" They
finished the meal in silence, each turned a little from the other, and
Kim topped it with a native-made cigarette.

"Have I not said an hundred times that the South is a good land?
Here is a virtuous and high-born widow of a Hill Rajah on
pilgrimage, she says, to Buddh Gaya. She it is sends us those
dishes; and when thou art well rested she would speak to thee."

"Is this also thy work?" The lama dipped deep into his snuff-gourd.

"Who else watched over thee since our wonderful journey began?"
Kim's eyes danced in his head as he blew the rank smoke through his
nostrils and stretched himself on the dusty ground. "Have I failed
to oversee thy comforts, Holy One?"

"A blessing on thee." The lama inclined his solemn head. "I have
known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few. But to
none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as
it has to thee- thoughtful, wise, and courteous, but something of a
small imp."
f  "And I have never seen such a priest as thou." Kim considered the
benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle. "It is less than three days
since we took road together, and it is as though it were a hundred
years."

"Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have
rendered thee some service. May be"- he smiled- "I freed thee from a
trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not
enlightened, cast thee back into the river."

"May be," said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation
again and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not
consider imaginative. "Now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart,
I think she needs a second son for her daughter."

"That is not part of the Way," sighed the lama. "But at least she is
from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!"

He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to
come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught
were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the
mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned
over in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard the
sing-song cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange picture
that Kim watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very straight
and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in
the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is
slashed with the shadow of the long sun, addressed a tinsel and
lacquered ruth which burned like a many-coloured jewel in the same
uncertain light. The patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and
down, melting and re-forming as the folds shook and quivered to the
night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest the jewelled
forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between the
embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness
speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and faces
and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled down to one
soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the
bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle
of a Bengali dancing-girl's sitar. Most men had eaten and pulled
deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound
like bull-frogs.

At last the lama returned. A hillman walked behind him with a wadded
cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.

"She deserves ten thousand grandchildren," thought Kim. "None the
less, but for me, these gifts would not have come."

"A virtuous woman- and a wise one." The lama slackened off, joint by
joint, like a slow camel. "The world is full of charity to those who
follow the Way." He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.

"And what said she?" Kim rolled up in his share of it.

"She asked me many questions and propounded many problems- the
most of which were idle tales which she had heard from devil-serving
priests who pretend to follow the Way. Some I answered, and some I
said were foolish. Many wear the Robe, but few keep the Way."

"True. That is true." Kim used the thoughtful, conciliatory tone
of those who wish to draw confidences.

"But by her lights she is most right-minded. She desires greatly
that we should go with her to Buddh Gaya; her road being ours, as I
understand, for many days' journey to the southward."

"And?"

"Patience a little. To this I said that my Search came before all
things. She had heard many foolish legends, but this great truth of my
River she had never heard. Such are the priests of the lower hills!
She knew the Abbot of Lung-Cho, but she did not know of my River-
nor the tale of the Arrow."

"And?"

"I spoke therefore of the Search, and of the Way, and of matters
that were profitable; she desiring only that I should accompany her
and make prayer for a second son."

"Aha! 'We women' do not think of anything save children," said Kim
sleepily.

"Now, since our roads run together for a while, I do not see that we
in any way depart from our Search if so be we accompany her- at
least as far as- I have forgotten the name of the city."

"Ohe!" said Kim, turning and speaking in a sharp whisper to one of
the Ooryas a few yards away. "Where is your master's house?"

"A little behind Saharunpore, among the fruit gardens." He named the
village.

"That was the place," said the lama. "So far, at least, we can go
with her."

"Flies go to carrion," said the Oorya, in an abstracted voice.

"For the sick cow a crow; for the sick man a Brahmin." Kim
breathed the proverb impersonally to the shadow-tops of the trees
overhead.

The Oorya grunted and held his peace.

"So then we go with her, Holy One?"

"Is there any reason against? I can still step aside and try all the
rivers that the road overpasses. She desires that I should come. She
very greatly desires it."

Kim stifled a laugh in the quilt. When once that imperious old
lady had recovered from her natural awe of a lama he thought it
probable that she would be worth listening to.

He was nearly asleep when the lama suddenly quoted a proverb: "The
husbands of the talkative have a great reward hereafter." Then Kim
heard him snuff thrice, and dozed off, still laughing.

The diamond-bright dawn woke men and crows and bullocks together.
Kim sat up and yawned, shook himself, and thrilled with delight.
This was seeing the world in real truth; this was life as he would
have it- bustling and shouting, the buckling of belts, and beating
of bullocks and creaking of wheels, lighting of fires and cooking of
food, and new sights at every turn of the approving eye. The morning
mist swept off in a whorl of silver, the parrots shot away to some
distant river in shrieking green hosts: all the well-wheels within
earshot went to work. India was awake, and Kim was in the middle of
it, more awake and more excited than any one, chewing on a twig that
he would presently use as a toothbrush; for he borrowed right- and
left-handedly from all the customs of the country he knew and loved.
There was no need to worry about food- no need to spend a cowrie at
the crowded stalls. He was the disciple of a holy man annexed by a
strong-willed old lady. All things would be prepared for them, and
when they were respectfully invited so to do they would sit and eat.
For the rest- Kim giggled here as he cleaned his teeth- his hostess
would rather heighten the enjoyment of the road. He inspected her
bullocks critically, as they came up grunting and blowing under the
yokes. If they went too fast- it was not likely- there would be a
pleasant seat for himself along the pole; the lama would sit beside
the driver. The escort, of course, would walk. The old lady, equally
of course, would talk a great deal, and by what he had heard that
conversation would not lack salt. She was already ordering,
haranguing, rebuking, and, it must be said, cursing her servants for
delays.

"Get her her pipe. In the name of the Gods, get her her pipe and
stop her ill-omened mouth," cried an Oorya, tying up his shapeless
bundles of bedding. "She and the parrots are alike. They screech in
the dawn."

"The lead-bullocks! Hai! Look to the lead-bullocks!" They were
backing and wheeling as a grain-cart's axle caught them by the
horns. "Son of an owl, where dost thou go?" This to the grinning
carter.

"Ai! Yai! Yai! That within there is the Queen of Delhi going to pray
for a son," the man called back over his high load. "Room for the
Queen of Delhi and her prime minister the gray monkey climbing up
his own sword!" Another cart loaded with bark for a down-country
tannery followed close behind, and its driver added a few
compliments as the ruth-bullocks backed and backed again.

From behind the shaking curtains came one volley of invective. It
did not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting
appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He
could see the carter's bare chest collapse with amazement, as the
man salaamed reverently to the voice, leaped from the pole, and helped
the escort haul their volcano on to the main road. Here the voice told
him truthfully what sort of wife he had wedded, and what she was doing
in his absence.

"Oh, shabash!" murmured Kim, unable to contain himself, as the man
slunk away.

"Well done, indeed? It is a shame and a scandal that a poor woman
may not go to make prayer to her Gods except she be jostled and
insulted by all the refuse of Hindustan- that she must eat gali
(abuse) as men eat ghi. But I have yet a wag left to my tongue- a word
or two well spoken that serves the occasion. And still am I without my
tobacco! Who is the one-eyed and luckless son of shame that has not
yet prepared my pipe?"

It was hastily thrust in by a hillman, and a trickle of thick
smoke from each corner of the curtains showed that peace was restored.

If Kim had walked proudly the day before, disciple of a holy man,
to-day he paced with tenfold pride in the train of a semi-royal
procession, with a recognised place under the patronage of an old lady
of charming manners and infinite resource. The escort, their heads
tied up native fashion, fell in on either side the cart, shuffling
enormous clouds of dust.

The lama and Kim walked a little to one side; Kim chewing his
stick of sugar-cane, and making way for no one under the status of a
priest. They could hear the old lady's tongue clack as steadily as a
rice-husker. She bade the escort tell her what was going on on the
road; and so soon as they were clear of the parao she flung back the
curtains and peered out, her veil a third across her face. Her men did
not eye her directly when she addressed them, and thus the proprieties
were more or less observed.

A dark, sallowish District Superintendent of Police, faultlessly
uniformed, an Englishman, trotted by on a tired horse, and, seeing
from her retinue what manner of person she was, chaffed her.

"O mother," he cried, "do they do this in the zenanas? Suppose an
Englishman came by and saw that thou hadst no nose?"

"What?" she shrilled back. "Thy own mother has no nose? Why say
so, then, on the open road?"

It was a fair counter. The Englishman threw up his hand with the
gesture of a man hit at sword-play. She laughed and nodded.

"Is this a face to tempt virtue aside?" She withdrew all her veil
and stared at him.

It was by no means lovely, but as the man gathered up his reins he
called it a Moon of Paradise, a Disturber of Integrity, and a few
other fantastic epithets which doubled her up with mirth.

"That is a nut-cut" (rogue), she said. "All police-constables are
nut-cuts; but the police-wallahs are the worst. Hai, my son, thou hast
never learned all that since thou camest from Belait (Europe). Who
suckled thee?"

"A pahareen- a hillwoman of Dalhousie, my mother. Keep thy beauty
under a shade- O Dispenser of Delights," and he was gone.

"These be the sort"- she took a fine judicial tone, and stuffed
her mouth with pan. "These be the sort to oversee justice. They know
the land and the customs of the land. The others, all new from Europe,
suckled by white women and learning our tongues from books, are
worse than the pestilence. They do harm to Kings." Then she told a
long, long tale to the world at large, of an ignorant young
policeman who had disturbed some small Hill Rajah, a ninth cousin of
her own, in the matter of a trivial land-case, winding up with a
quotation from a work by no means devotional.

Then her mood changed, and she bade one of the escort ask whether
the lama would walk alongside and discuss matters of religion. So
Kim dropped back into the dust and returned to his sugar-cane. For
an hour or more the lama's tam-o'-shanter showed like a moon through
the haze; and, from all he heard, Kim gathered that the old woman
wept. One of the Ooryas half apologised for his rudeness overnight,
saying that he had never known his mistress of so bland a temper,
and he ascribed it to the presence of the strange priest.
Personally, he believed in Brahmins, though, like all natives, he
was acutely aware of their cunning and their greed. Still, when
Brahmins but irritated with begging demands the mother of his master's
wife, and when she sent them away so angry that they cursed the
whole retinue (which was the real reason of the second off-side
bullock going lame, and of the pole breaking the night before), he was
prepared to accept any priest of any other denomination in or out of
India. To this Kim assented with wise nods, and bade the Oorya observe
that the lama took no money, and that the cost of his and Kim's food
would be repaid a hundred times in the good luck that would attend the
caravan henceforward. He also told stories of Lahore city, and sang
a song or two which made the escort laugh. As a town-mouse well
acquainted with the latest songs by the most fashionable composers-
they are women for the most part- Kim had a distinct advantage over
men from a little fruit-village behind Saharunpore, but he let that
advantage be inferred.

At noon they turned aside to eat, and the meal was good,
plentiful, and well served on plates of clean leaves, in decency,
out of drift of the dust. They gave the scraps to certain beggars,
that all requirements might be fulfilled, and sat down to a long,
luxurious smoke. The old lady had retreated behind her curtains, but
mixed most freely in the talk, her servants arguing with and
contradicting her as servants do throughout the East. She compared the
cool and the pines of the Kangra and Kulu hills with the dust and
the mangoes of the South; she told a tale of some old local Gods at
the edge of her husband's territory; she roundly abused the tobacco
which she was then smoking, reviled all Brahmins, and speculated
without reserve on the coming of many grandsons.

                                5


                Here come I to my own again-
                Fed, forgiven, and known again-
                Claimed by bone of my bone again,
                  And sib to flesh of my flesh!
                The fatted calf is dressed for me,
                But the husks have greater zest for me...
                I think my pigs will be best for me,
                  So I'm off to the styes afresh.
                                   " THE  PRODIGAL  SON "


Once more the lazy, string-tied, shuffling procession got under way,
and she slept till they reached the next halting-stage. It was a
very short march, and time lacked an hour to sundown, so Kim cast
about for means of amusement.

"But why not sit and rest?" said one of the escort. "Only the devils
and the English walk to and fro without reason."

"Never make friends with the Devil, a monkey, or a boy. No man knows
what they will do next," said his fellow.

Kim turned a scornful back- he did not want to hear the old story
how the Devil played with the boys and repented of it- and walked idly
across country.

The lama strode after him. All that day, whenever they passed a
stream, he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he
received any warning that he had found his River. Insensibly too the
comfort of speaking to some one in a reasonable tongue, and of being
properly considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by a
well-born woman, had weaned his thoughts a little from the Search. And
further, he was prepared to spend serene years in his quest; having
nothing of the white man's impatience, but a great faith.

"Where goest thou?" he called after Kim.

"No whither-it was a small march, and all this"- Kim waved his hands
abroad- "is new to me."

"She is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. But it is
hard to meditate when- "

"All women are thus." Kim spoke as might have Solomon.

"Before the lamassery was a broad platform," the lama muttered,
looping up the well-worn rosary, "of stone. On that I have left the
marks of my feet- pacing to and fro with these."

He clicked the beads, and began the "Om mane pudme hum" of his
devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of dust.

One thing after another drew Kim's idle eye across the plain.
There was no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the
huts near by seemed new, and he wished to investigate.

They came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple
in the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the centre.
It struck Kim as curious that no shrine stood in so eligible a spot:
the boy was observing as any priest for these things. Far across the
plain walked side by side four men, made small by the distance. He
looked intently under his curved palms and caught the sheen of brass.

"Soldiers. White soldiers!" said he. "Let us see."

"It is always soldiers when thou and I go out alone together. But
I have never seen the white soldiers."

"They do no harm except when they are drunk. Keep behind this tree."

They stepped behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the
mango-tope. Two little figures halted; the other two came forward
uncertainly. They were the advance-party of a regiment on the march,
sent out, as usual, to mark the camp. They bore five-foot sticks
with fluttering flags, and called to each other as they spread over
the flat earth.

At last they entered the mango-grove, walking heavily.

"It's here or hereabouts- officers' tents under the trees, I take
it, an' the rest of us can stay outside. Have they marked out for
the baggage-waggons behind?"

They cried again to their comrades in the distance, and the rough
answer came back faint and mellowed.

"Shove the flag in here, then," said one.

"What do they prepare?" said the lama, wonder-struck. "This is a
great and terrible world. What is the device on the flag?"

A soldier thrust a stave within a few feet of them, grunted
discontentedly, pulled it up again, conferred with his companion,
who looked up and down the shaded cave of greenery, and returned it.

Kim stared with all his eyes, his breath coming short and sharp
between his teeth. The soldiers stamped off into the sunshine.

"O Holy One," he gasped, "my horoscope! The drawing in the dust by
the priest at Umballa! Remember what he said. First come two-
ferashes- to make all things ready- in a dark place, as it is always
at the beginning of a vision."

"But this is not vision," said the lama. "It is the world's
Illusion, and no more."

"And after them comes the Bull- the Red Bull on the green field.
Look! It is he!"

He pointed to the flag that was snap-snapping in the evening
breeze not ten feet away. It was no more than an ordinary camp
marking-flag; but the regiment, always punctilious in matters of
millinery, had charged it with the regimental device, the Red Bull,
which is the crest of the Mavericks- the great Red Bull on a
background of Irish green.

"I see, and now I remember," said the lama. "Certainly it is thy
Bull. Certainly, also, the two men came to make all ready."

"They are soldiers- white soldiers. What said the priest? 'The
sign over against the Bull is the sign of War and armed men.' Holy
One, this thing touches my Search.

"True. It is true." The lama stared fixedly at the device that
flamed like a ruby in the dusk. "The priest at Umballa said that thine
was the sign of War."

"What is to do now?"

"Wait. Let us wait."

"Even now the darkness clears," said Kim. It was only natural that
the descending sun should at last strike through the tree-trunks,
across the grove, filling it with mealy gold light for a few
minutes; but to Kim it was the crown of the Umballa Brahmin's
prophecy.

"Hark!" said the lama. "One beats a drum- far off!"

At first the sound, carrying diluted through the still air,
resembled the beating of an artery in the head. Soon a sharpness was
added.

"Ah! The music," Kim explained. He knew the sound of a regimental
band, but it amazed the lama.

At the far end of the plain a heavy, dusty column crawled in
sight. Then the wind brought the tune:-


   "We crave your condescension

    To tell you what we know

  Of marching in the Mulligan Guards

    To Sligo Port below."


Here broke in the shrill tongued fifes:-


   "We shouldered arms,

    We marched- we marched away

    From Phoenix Park

    We marched to Dublin Bay.

    The drums and the fifes,

    Oh, sweetly they did play,

    As we marched- marched- marched- with the Mulligan Guards!"


It was the band of the Mavericks playing the regiment to camp; for
the men were route-marching with their baggage. The rippling column
swung into the level- carts behind it- divided left and right, ran
about like an ant-hill, and...

"But this is sorcery!"- said the lama.

The plain dotted itself with tents that seemed to rise, all
spread, from the carts. Another rush of men invaded the grove, pitched
a huge tent in silence, ran up yet eight or nine more by the side of
it, unearthed cooking-pots, pans, and bundles, which were taken
possession of by a crowd of native servants; and behold the mango-tope
turned into an orderly town as they watched!

"Let us go," said the lama, sinking back afraid, as the fires
twinkled and white officers with jingling swords stalked into the
mess-tent.

"Stand back in the shadow. No one can see beyond the light of a
fire," said Kim, his eyes still on the flag. He had never before
watched the routine of a seasoned regiment pitching camp in thirty
minutes.

"Look! look! look!" clucked the lama. "Yonder comes a priest."

It was Bennett, the Church of England chaplain of the regiment,
limping in dusty black. One of his flock had made some rude remarks
about the chaplain's mettle; and to abash him Bennett had marched step
by step with the men that day. The black dress, gold cross on the
watch-chain, the hairless face, and the soft, black wide-awake hat
would have marked him as a holy man anywhere in all India. He
dropped into a camp-chair by the door of the mess-tent and slid off
his boots. Three or four officers gathered round him, laughing and
joking over his exploit.

"The talk of white men is wholly lacking in dignity," said the lama,
who judged only by tone. "But I have considered the countenance of
that priest, and I think he is learned. Is it likely that he will
understand our talk? I would talk to him of my Search."

"Never speak to a white man till he is fed," said Kim, quoting a
well-known proverb. "They will eat now, and- and I do not think they
are good to beg from. Let us go back to the resting-place. After we
have eaten we will come again. It certainly was a Red Bull- my Red
Bull."

They were both noticeably absent-minded when the old lady's
retinue set their meal before them; so none broke their reserve, for
it is not lucky to annoy guests.

"Now," said Kim, picking his teeth, we will return to that place;
but thou, O Holy One, must wait a little way off, because thy feet are
heavier than mine and I am anxious to see more of that Red Bull."

"But how canst thou understand the talk? Walk slowly. The road is
dark," the lama replied uneasily.

Kim put the question aside. "I marked a place near to the trees,"
said he, "where thou canst sit till I call. Nay," as the lama made
some sort of protest, "remember this is my Search- the Search for my
Red Bull. The sign in the Stars was not for thee. I know a little of
the customs of white soldiers, and I always desire to see some new
things.

"What dost thou not know of this world?" The lama squatted
obediently in a little hollow of the ground not a hundred yards from
the hump of the mango trees dark against the star-powdered sky.

"Stay till I call." Kim flitted into the dusk. He knew that in all
probability there would be sentries round the camp, and smiled to
himself as he heard the thick boots of one. A boy who can dodge over
the roofs of Lahore city on a moonlight night, using every little
patch and corner of darkness to discomfit his pursuer, is not likely
to be checked by a line of well-trained soldiers. He paid them the
compliment of crawling between a couple, and, running and halting,
crouching and dropping flat, worked his way toward the lighted
mess-tent where, close pressed behind the mango tree, he waited till
some chance word should give him a returnable lead.

The one thing in his mind now was further information as to the
Red Bull. For aught he knew, and Kim's limitations were as curious and
sudden as his expansions, the men, the nine hundred thorough devils of
his father's prophecy, might pray to the beast after dark, as Hindus
pray to the Holy Cow. That at least would be entirely right and
logical, and the Padre with the gold cross would be therefore the
man to consult in the matter. On the other hand, remembering
sober-faced padres whom he had avoided in Lahore city, the priest
might be an inquisitive nuisance who would bid him learn. But had it
not been proven at Umballa that his sign in the high heavens portended
war and armed men? Was he not the Friend of the Stars as well as of
all the world, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? Lastly- and
firstly as the undercurrent of all his quick thoughts- this adventure,
though he did not know the English word, was a stupendous lark- a
delightful continuation of his old flights across the housetops, as
well as the fulfilment of sublime prophecy. He lay belly-flat and
wriggled towards the mess-tent door, a hand on the amulet round his
neck.

It was as he suspected. The Sahibs prayed to their God; for in the
centre of the mess-table- its sole ornament when they were on the line
of march- stood a golden bull fashioned from old-time loot of the
Summer Palace at Pekin- a red-gold bull with lowered head, ramping
upon a field of Irish green. To him the Sahibs held out their
glasses and cried aloud confusedly.

Now the Reverend Arthur Bennett always left mess after that toast,
and being rather tired by his march his movements were more abrupt
than usual. Kim, with slightly raised head, was still staring at his
totem on the table, when the chaplain stepped on his right
shoulder-blade. Kim flinched under the leather, and, rolling sideways,
brought down the chaplain, who, ever a man of action, caught him by
the throat and nearly choked the life out of him. Kim then kicked
him desperately in the stomach. Mr. Bennett gasped and doubled up
but without relaxing his grip, rolled over again, and silently
hauled Kim to his own tent. The Mavericks were incurable practical
jokers; and it occurred to the Englishman that silence was best till
he had made complete inquiry.

"Why, it's a boy!" he said, as he drew his prize under the light
of the tent-pole lantern, then shaking him severely cried: "What
were you doing? You're a thief. Choor? Mallum?" His Hindustanee was
very limited, and the ruffled and disgusted Kim intended to keep to
the character laid down for him. As he recovered his breath he was
inventing a beautifully plausible tale of his relations to some
mess-scullion, and at the same time keeping a keen eye on and a little
under the chaplain's left armpit. The chance came; he ducked for the
doorway, but a long arm shot out and clutched at his neck, snapping
the amulet string and closing on the amulet.

"Give it me. O give it me. Is it lost? Give me the papers."

The words were in English- the tinny, saw-cut English of the
native-bred, and the chaplain jumped.

"A scapular," said he, opening his hand. "No, some sort of heathen
charm. Why- why, do you speak English? Little boys who steal are
beaten. You know that?"
 "I do not- I did not steal." Kim danced in agony like a terrier at
a lifted stick. "O give it me. It is my charm. Do not thieve it from
me."

The chaplain took no heed, but, going to the tent door, called
aloud. A fattish, clean-shaven man appeared.

"I want your advice, Father Victor," said Bennett. "I found this boy
in the dark outside the mess-tent. Ordinarily, I should have chastised
him and let him go, because I believe him to be a thief. But it
seems he talks English, and he attaches some sort of value to a
charm round his neck. I thought perhaps you might help me."

Between himself and the Roman Catholic chaplain of the Irish
contingent lay, as Bennett believed, an unbridgeable gulf, but it
was noticeable that whenever the Church of England dealt with a
human problem she was likely to call in the Church of Rome.
Bennett's official abhorrence of the Scarlet Woman and all her ways
was only equalled by his private respect for Father Victor.

"A thief talking English is it? Let's look at his charm. No, it's
not a scapular, Bennett." He held out his hand.

"But have we any right to open it? A sound whipping- "

"I did not thieve," protested Kim. "You have hit me kicks all over
my body. Now give me my charm and I will go away."

"Not quite so fast; we'll look first," said Father Victor, leisurely
rolling out poor Kimball O'Hara's "ne varietur" parchment, his
clearance-certificate, and Kim's baptismal certificate. On this last
O'Hara- with some confused idea that he was doing wonders for his son-
had scrawled scores of times: "Look after the boy. Please look after
the boy,"- signing his name and regimental number in full.

"Powers of Darkness below!" said Father Victor, passing all over
to Mr. Bennett. "Do you know what these things are?"

"Yes," said Kim. "They are mine, and I want to go away."

"I do not quite understand," said Mr. Bennett. "He probably
brought them on purpose. It may be a begging trick of some kind."

"I never saw a beggar less anxious to stay with his company, then.
There's the makings of a gay mystery here. Ye believe in Providence,
Bennett?"

"I hope so."

"Well, I believe in miracles, so it comes to the same thing.
Powers of Darkness! Kimball O'Hara! And his son! But then he's a
native, and I saw Kimball married myself to Annie Shott. How long have
you had these things, boy?

"Ever since I was a little baby." Father Victor stepped forward
quickly and opened the front of Kim's upper garment. "You see,
Bennett, he's not very black. What's your name?"

"Kim."

"Or Kimball?"

"Perhaps. Will you let me go away?"

"What else?"

"They call me Kim Rishti ke. That is Kim of the Rishti."

"What is that- 'Rishti'?"

"Eye-rishti- that was the regiment- my father's."

"Irish, oh I see."

"Yess. That was how my father told me. My father, he has lived."

"Has lived where?"

"Has lived. Of course he is dead- gone-out."

"Oh. That's your abrupt way of putting it, is it?"

Bennett interrupted. "It is possible I have done the boy an
injustice. He is certainly white, though evidently neglected. I am
sure I must have bruised him. I do not think spirits- "

"Get him a glass of sherry, then, and let him squat on the cot. Now,
Kim," continued Father Victor, "no one is going to hurt you. Drink
that down and tell us about yourself. The truth, if you've no
objection."

Kim coughed a little as he put down the empty glass, and considered.
This seemed a time for caution and fancy. Small boys who prowl about
camps are generally turned out after a whipping. But he had received
no stripes; the amulet was evidently working in his favour, and it
looked as though the Umballa horoscope and the few words that he could
remember of his father's maunderings fitted in most miraculously. Else
why did the fat padre seem so impressed, and why the glass of hot
yellow wine from the lean one?

"My father, he is dead in Lahore city since I was very little. The
woman, she kept kabarri-shop near where the hire-carriages are." Kim
began with a plunge, not quite sure how far the truth would serve him.

"Your mother?"

"No"- with a gesture of disgust. "She went out when I was born. My
father, he got these papers from the Jadoo-Gher- what do you call
that?" (Bennett nodded) "because he was in- good-standing. What do you
call that?" (again Bennett nodded). "My father told me that. He said
too, and also the Brahmin who made the drawing in the dust at
Umballa two days ago, he said, that I shall find a Red Bull on a green
field and that the Bull shall help me."

"A phenomenal little liar," muttered Bennett.

"Powers of Darkness below, what a country!" murmured Father
Victor. "Go on, Kim."

"I did not thieve. Besides, I am just now disciple of a very holy
man. He is sitting outside. We saw two men come with flags, making the
place ready. That is always so in a dream, or on account of a- a-
prophecy. So I knew it was come true. I saw the Red Bull on the
green field, and my father he said: 'Nine hundred pukka devils and the
Colonel riding on a horse will look after you when you find the Red
Bull!' I did not know what to do when I saw the Bull, but I went
away and I came again when it was dark. I wanted to see the Bull
again, and I saw the Bull again with the- the Sahibs praying to it.
I think the Bull shall help me. The holy man said so too. He is
sitting outside. Will you hurt him, if I call him a shout now? He is
very holy. He can witness to all the things I say, and he knows I am
not a thief."

"'Officers praying to a bull!' What in the world do you make of
that?" said Bennett. "'Disciple of a holy man!' Is the boy mad?"

"It's O'Hara's boy, sure enough. O'Hara's boy leagued with all the
Powers of Darkness. It's very much what his father would have done- if
he was drunk. We'd better invite the holy man. He may know something."

"He does not know anything," said Kim. "I will show you him if you
come. He is my master. Then afterwards we can go."

"Powers of Darkness!" was all that Father Victor could say, as
Bennett marched off, with a firm hand on Kim's shoulder.

They found the lama where he had dropped.

"The Search is at an end for me," shouted Kim in the vernacular.
"I have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not
hurt you. Come to the fat priest's tent with this thin man and see the
end. It is all new, and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only
uncurried donkeys."

"Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance," the lama
returned. "I am glad if thou art rejoiced, chela."

Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent,
saluted the Churches as a Churchman, and sat down by the open charcoal
brazier. The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made
his face red-gold.

Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed
that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of "heathen."

"And what was the end of the search? What gift has the Red Bull
brought?" The lama addressed himself to Kim.

"He says, 'What are you going to do?'" Bennett was staring
uneasily at Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon
himself the office of interpreter.

"I do not see what concern this faquir has with the boy, who is
probably his dupe or his confederate," Bennett began. "We cannot allow
an English boy- Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner
he goes to the Masonic Orphanage the better."

"Ah! That's your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental Lodge," said
Father Victor; "but we might as well tell the old man what we are
going to do. He doesn't look like a villain."

"My experience is that one can never fathom the Oriental mind.
Now, Kimball, I wish you to tell this man what I say- word for word."

Kim gathered the import of the next few sentences and began thus:

"Holy One, the thin fool who looks like a camel says that I am the
son of a Sahib."

"But how?"

"Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but he could only find it
out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers.
He thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between the two
of them they purpose to keep me in this regiment or to send me to a
madrissah (a school). It has happened before. I have always avoided
it. The fat fool is of one mind and the camel-like one of another. But
that is no odds. I may spend one night here and perhaps the next. It
has happened before. Then I will run away and return to thee."

"But tell them that thou art my chela. Tell them how thou didst come
to me when I was faint and bewildered. Tell them of our Search, and
they will surely let thee go now."

"I have already told them. They laugh, and they talk of the Police."

"What are you saying?" asked Mr. Bennett.

"Oah. He only says that if you do not let me go it will stop him
in his business- his ur-gent private affairs." This last was a
reminiscence of some talk with a Eurasian clerk in the Canal
Department, but it only drew a smile, which nettled him. "And if you
did know what his business was you would not be in such a beastly
hurry to interfere."

"What is it then?" said Father Victor, not without feeling, as he
watched the lama's face.

"There is a River in this country which he wishes to find so
verree much. It was put out by an Arrow which- " Kim tapped his foot
impatiently as he translated in his own mind from the vernacular to
his clumsy English. "Oah, it was made by our Lord God Buddha, you
know, and if you wash there you are washed away from all your sins and
made as white as cotton-wool." (Kim had heard mission-talk in his
time.) "I am his disciple, and we must find that River. It is so
verree valuable to us."

"Say that again," said Bennett. Kim obeyed, with amplifications.

"But this is gross blasphemy!" cried the Church of England.

"Tck! Tck!" said Father Victor sympathetically. "I'd give a good
deal to be able to talk the vernacular. A river that washes away
sin! And how long have you two been looking for it?"

"Oh, many days. Now we wish to go away and look for it again. It
is not here, you see."

"I see," said Father Victor gravely. "But he can't go on in that old
man's company. It would be different, Kim, if you were not a soldier's
son. Tell him that the regiment will take care of you and make you
as good a man as your- as good a man as can be. Tell him that if he
believes in miracles he must believe that- "

"There is no need to play on his credulity," Bennett interrupted.

"I'm doing no such thing. He must believe that the boy's coming
here- to his own regiment- in search of his Red Bull is in the
nature of a miracle. Consider the chances against it, Bennett. This
one boy in all India, and our regiment of all others on the line o'
march for him to meet with! It's predestined on the face of it. Yes,
tell him it's Kismet. Kismet, mallum?" (Fate! Do you understand?)

He turned towards the lama, to whom he might as well have talked
of Mesopotamia.

"They say"- the old man's eye lighted at Kim's speech- "they say
that the meaning of my horoscope is now accomplished, and that being
led back- though as thou knowest I went out of curiosity- to these
people and their Red Bull I must needs go to a madrissah and be turned
into a Sahib. Now I make pretence of agreement, for at the worst it
will be but a few meals eaten away from thee. Then I will slip away
and follow down the road to Saharunpore. Therefore, Holy One, keep
with that Kulu woman- on no account stray far from her cart till I
come again. Past question, my sign is of War and of armed men. See how
they have given me wine to drink and set me upon a bed of honour! My
father must have been some great person. So if they raise me to honour
among them, good. If not, good again. However it goes, I will run back
to thee when I am tired. But stay with the Rajputni, or I shall miss
thy feet.... Oah yess," said the boy, "I have told him everything
you tell me to say."

"And I cannot see any need why he should wait," said Bennett,
feeling in his trouser-pocket. "We can investigate the details
later- and I will give him a ru-"

"Give him time. May be he's fond of the lad," said Father Victor,
half-arresting the clergyman's motion.

The lama dragged forth his rosary and pulled his huge hat-brim
over his eyes.

"What can he want now?"

"He says"- Kim put up one hand. "He says: Be quiett. He wants to
speak to me by himself. You see you do not know one little word of
what he says, and I think if you talk he will perhaps give you very
bad curses. When he takes those beads like that, you see he always
wants to be quiett."

The two Englishmen sat overwhelmed, but there was a look in
Bennett's eye that promised ill for Kim when he should be relaxed to
the religious arm.

"A Sahib and the son of a Sahib- " The lama's voice was harsh with
pain. "But no white man knows the land and the customs of the land
as thou knowest. How comes it this is true?"

"What matter, Holy One: but remember it is only for a night or
two. Remember, I can change swiftly. It will be as it was when I first
spoke to thee under Zam-Zammah the great gun- "

"As a boy in the dress of white men- when I first went to the Wonder
House. And a second time thou wast a Hindu. What shall the third
incarnation be?" He chuckled drearily. "Ah, chela, thou hast done a
wrong to an old man because my heart went out to thee."

"And mine to thee. But how could I know that the Red Bull would
bring me to this business?"

The lama covered his face afresh, and nervously rattled the
rosary. Kim squatted beside him and laid hold upon a fold of his
clothing.

"Now it is understood that the boy is a Sahib?" he went on in a
muffled tone. "Such a Sahib as was he who kept the images in the
Wonder House." The lama's experience of white men was limited. He
seemed to be repeating a lesson. "So then it is not seemly that he
should do other than as the Sahibs do. He must go back to his own
people."

"For a day and a night and a day," Kim pleaded.

"No, ye don't!" Father Victor saw Kim edging towards the door, and
interposed a strong leg.

"I do not understand the customs of white men. The Priest of the
Images in the Wonder House in Lahore was more courteous than the
thin one here. This boy will be taken from me. They will make a
Sahib of my disciple? Woe to me, how shall I find my River? Have
they no disciples? Ask."

"He says he is very sorry that he cannot find the River now any
more. He says, Why have you no disciples, and stop bothering him? He
wants to be washed of his sins."

Neither Bennett nor Father Victor found any answer ready.

Said Kim in English, distressed for the lama's agony: "I think if
you will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. We
will look for that River like before I was caught. I wish I did not
come here to find the Red Bull and all that sort of thing. I do not
want it."

"It's the very best day's work you ever did for yourself, young
man," said Bennett.

"Good heavens, I don't know how to console him," said Father Victor,
watching the lama intently. "He can't take the boy away with him,
and yet he's a good man- I'm sure he's a good man. Bennett, if you
give him that rupee he'll curse you root and branch!"

They listened to each other's breathing- three- five full minutes.
Then the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space
and emptiness.

"And I am a follower of the Way," he said bitterly. "The sin is mine
and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself- for now I see it
was but make-belief- that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search.
So my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and
the wisdom of thy little years. But those who follow the Way must
permit not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all
illusion. As says... " He quoted an old, old Chinese text, backed it
with another, and reinforced these with a third. "I stepped aside from
the Way, my chela. It was no fault of thine. I delighted in the
sight of life, the new people upon the roads, and in thy joy at seeing
these things. I was pleased with thee who should have considered my
Search and my Search alone. Now I am sorrowful because thou art
taken away and my River is far from me. It is the Law which I have
broken!"

"Powers of Darkness below!" said Father Victor, who, wise in the
confessional, heard the pain in every sentence.

"I see now that the sign of the Red Bull was a sign for me as well
as for thee. All Desire is red- and evil. I will do penance and find
my River alone."

"At least go back to the Kulu woman," said Kim, "otherwise thou wilt
be lost upon the roads. She will feed thee till I run back to thee."

The lama waved a hand to show that the matter was finally settled in
his mind.

"Now"- his tone altered as he turned to Kim- "what will they do with
thee? At least I may, acquiring merit, wipe out past ill."

"Make me a Sahib- so they think. The day after to-morrow I return.
Do not grieve."

"Of what sort? Such an one as this or that man?" He pointed to
Father Victor. "Such an one as those I saw this evening- men wearing
swords and stamping heavily?"

"May be."

"That is not well. These men follow desire and come to emptiness.
Thou must not be of their sort."

The Umballa priest said that my Star was War," Kim interjected. "I
will ask these fools- but there is truly no need. I will run away this
night, for all I wanted to see the new things."

Kim put two or three questions in English to Father Victor,
translating the replies to the lama.

Then: "He says, 'You take him from me and you cannot say what you
will make him.' He says, 'Tell me before I go, for it is not a small
thing to make a child.'"

"You will be sent to a school. Later on, we shall see. Kimball, I
suppose you'd like to be a soldier?"

"Gorah-log (white-folk). No-ah! No-ah!" Kim shook his head
violently. There was nothing in his composition to which drill and
routine appealed. "I will not be a soldier."

"You will be what you're told to be," said Bennett; and you should
be grateful that we're going to help you."

Kim smiled compassionately. If these men lay under the delusion that
he would do anything that he did not fancy, so much the better.

Another long silence followed. Bennett fidgeted with impatience, and
suggested calling a sentry to evict the faquir.

"Do they give or sell learning among the Sahibs? Ask them," said the
lama, and Kim interpreted.

"They say that money is paid to the teacher- but that money the
regiment will give.... What need? It is only for a night."

"And- the more money is paid the better learning is given?" The lama
disregarded Kim's plans for an early flight. "It is no wrong to pay
for learning; to help the ignorant to wisdom is always a merit." The
rosary clicked furiously as an abacus. Then he faced his oppressors.

"Ask them for how much money do they give a wise and suitable
teaching? and in what city is that teaching given?"

"Well," said Father Victor in English, when Kim had translated,
"that depends. The regiment would pay for you all the time you are
at the Military Orphanage; or you might go on the Punjab Masonic
Orphanage's list (not that he or you 'ud understand what that
means); but the best schooling a boy can get in India is, of course,
at St. Xavier's in Partibus at Lucknow." This took some time to
interpret, for Bennett wished to cut it short.

"He wants to know how much?" said Kim placidly.

"Two or three hundred rupees a year." Father Victor was long past
any sense of amazement. Bennett, impatient, did not understand.

"He says: 'Write that name and the money upon a paper and give it
him.' And he says you must write your name below, because he is
going to write a letter in some days to you. He says you are a good
man. He says the other man is a fool. He is going away."

The lama rose suddenly. "I follow my Search," he cried, and was
gone.

"He'll run slap into the sentries," cried Father Victor, jumping
up as the lama stalked out; "but I can't leave the boy." Kim made
swift motion to follow, but checked himself. There was no sound of
challenge outside. The lama had disappeared.

Kim settled himself composedly on the chaplain's cot. At least the
lama had promised that he would stay with the Rajput woman from
Kulu, and the rest was of the smallest importance. It pleased him that
the two padres were so evidently excited. They talked long in
undertones, Father Victor urging some scheme on Mr. Bennett, who
seemed incredulous. All this was very new and fascinating, but Kim
felt sleepy. They called men into the tent- one of them certainly
was the Colonel, as his father had prophesied- and they asked him an
infinity of questions, chiefly about the woman who looked after him,
all of which Kim answered truthfully. They did not seem to think the
woman a good guardian.

After all, this was the newest of his experiences. Sooner or
later, if he chose, he could escape into great, gray, formless
India, beyond tents and padres and colonels. Meantime, if the Sahibs
were to be impressed, he would do his best to impress them. He too was
a white man.

After much talk that he could not comprehend, they handed him over
to a sergeant, who had strict instructions not to let him escape.
The regiment would go on to Umballa, and Kim would be sent up,
partly at the expense of the Lodge and in part by subscription, to a
place called Sanawar.

"It's miraculous past all whooping, Colonel," said Father Victor,
when he had talked without a break for ten minutes. "His Buddhist
friend has levanted after taking my name and address. I can't quite
make out whether he'll pay for the boy's education or whether he is
preparing some sort of witchcraft on his own account." Then to Kim:
"You'll live to be grateful to your friend the Red Bull yet. We'll
make a man of you at Sanawar- even at the price o' making you a
Protestant."

"Certainly- most certainly," said Bennett.

"But you will not go to Sanawar," said Kim.

"But we will go to Sanawar, little man. That's the order of the
Commander-in-Chief, who's a trifle more important than O'Hara's son."

"You will not go to Sanawar. You will go to thee war."

There was a shout of laughter from the full tent.

"When you know your own regiment a trifle better you won't confuse
the line of march with line of battle, Kim. We hope to go to 'thee
war' sometime."

"Oah, I know all thatt." Kim drew his bow again at a venture. If
they were not going to the war, at least they did not know what he
knew of the talk in the veranda at Umballa.

"I know you are not at thee war now; but I tell you that as soon
as you get to Umballa you will be sent to the war- the new war. It
is a war of eight thousand men, besides the guns."

"That's explicit. D'you add prophecy to your other gifts? Take him
along, Sergeant. Take up a suit for him from the Drums, an' take
care he doesn't slip through your fingers. Who says the age of
miracles is gone by? I think I'll go to bed. My poor mind's
weakening."

At the far end of the camp, silent as a wild animal, an hour later
sat Kim, newly washed all over, in a horrible stuff suit that rasped
his arms and legs.

"A most amazin' young bird," said the Sergeant. He turns up in
charge of a yellow-headed buck-Brahmin priest, with his father's Lodge
certificates round his neck, talkin' God knows what all of a red bull.
The buck-Brahmin evaporates without explanations, an' the bhoy sets
cross-legged on the chaplain's bed prophesyin' bloody war to the men
at large. Injia's a wild land for a God-fearin' man. I'll just tie his
leg to the tent-pole in case he'll go through the roof. What did ye
say about the war?

"Eight thousand men, besides guns," said Kim. "Very soon you will
see."

"You're a consolin' little imp. Lie down between the Drums an' go to
bye-bye. Those two boys beside ye will watch your slumbers."

                               6


              Now I remember comrades-
                Old playmates on new seas-
              Whenas we traded orpiment
                Among the savages.
              Ten thousand leagues to southward,
                And thirty years removed-
              They knew not noble Valdez,
                But me they knew and loved.
                        " SONG  OF  DIEGO  VALDEZ "


Very early in the morning the white tents came down and
disappeared as the Mavericks took a side road to Umballa. It did not
skirt the resting-place, and Kim, trudging beside a baggage-cart under
fire of comments from soldiers' wives, was not so confident as
overnight. He discovered that he was closely watched- Father Victor on
the one side, and Mr. Bennett on the other.

In the forenoon the column checked. A camel-orderly handed the
Colonel a letter. He read it, and spoke to a major. Half a mile in the
rear, Kim heard a hoarse and joyful clamour rolling down on him
through the thick dust. Then some one beat him on the back, crying:
"Tell us how ye knew, ye little limb of Satan? Father dear, see if
ye can make him tell."

A pony ranged alongside, and he was hauled on to the priest's
saddle-bow.

"Now, my son, your prophecy of last night has come true. Our
orders are to entrain at Umballa for the front to-morrow."

"What is thatt?" said Kim, for "front" and "entrain" were newish
words to him.

"We are going to 'thee war,' as you called it."

"Of course you are going to thee war. I said last night."

"Ye did; but, Powers o' Darkness, how did ye know?"

Kim's eyes sparkled. He shut his lips, nodded his head, and looked
unspeakable things. The chaplain moved on through the dust, and
privates, sergeants, and subalterns called one another's attention
to the boy. The Colonel, at the head of the column, stared at him
curiously. "It was probably some bazar rumour," he said; "but even
then- " He referred to the paper in his hand. "Hang it all, the
thing was only decided within the last forty-eight hours."

"Are there many more like you in India?" said Father Victor, "or are
you by way o' being a lusus naturae?"

"Now I have told you," said the boy, "will you let me go back to
my old man? If he has not stayed with that woman from Kulu, I am
afraid he will die."

"By what I saw of him he's as well able to take care of himself as
you. No. Ye've brought us luck, an' we're goin' to make a man of
you. I'll take ye back to your baggage-cart and ye'll come to me
this evening."

For the rest of the day Kim found himself an object of distinguished
consideration among a few hundred white men. The story of his
appearance in camp, the discovery of his parentage, and his
prophecy, had lost nothing in the telling. A big, shapeless white
woman of a pile of bedding asked him mysteriously whether he thought
her husband would come back from the war. Kim reflected gravely, and
said that he would, and the woman gave him food. In many respects,
this big procession that played music at intervals- this crowd that
talked and laughed so easily- resembled a festival in Lahore city.
So far, there was no sign of hard work, and he resolved to lend the
spectacle his patronage. At evening there came out to meet them
bands of music, and played the Mavericks into camp near Umballa
railway station. That was an interesting night. Men of other regiments
came to visit the Mavericks. The Mavericks went visiting on their
own account. Their pickets hurried forth to bring them back, met
pickets of strange regiments on the same duty; and, after a while, the
bugles blew madly for more pickets with officers to control the
tumult. The Mavericks had a reputation for liveliness to live up to.
But they fell in on the platform next morning in perfect shape and
condition; and Kim, left behind with the sick, women, and boys,
found himself shouting farewells excitedly as the trains drew away.
Life as a Sahib was amusing so far; but he touched it with a
cautious hand. Then they marched him back in charge of a drummer-boy
to empty, lime-washed barracks, whose floors were covered with rubbish
and string and paper, and whose ceilings gave back his lonely
footfall. Native fashion, he curled himself up on a stripped cot and
went to sleep. An angry man stumped down the veranda, woke him up, and
said he was a schoolmaster. This was enough for Kim, and he retired
into his shell. He could just puzzle out the various English Police
notices in Lahore city, because they affected his comfort; and among
the many guests of the woman who looked after him had been a queer
German who painted scenery for the Parsee travelling theatre. He
told Kim that he had been "on the barricades in Forty-eight," and
therefore- at least that was how it struck Kim- he would teach the boy
to write in return for food. Kim had been kicked as far as single
letters, but did not think well of them.

"I do not know anything. Go away!" said Kim, scenting evil. Hereupon
the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing
where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be
still if he could do nothing else. This he managed very
successfully. The man explained something or other with white lines on
a black board for at least half an hour, and Kim continued his
interrupted nap. He much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs,
for this was the very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of
his young life in avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him,
and he wondered that he had not thought of it before.

The man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into
the open sunshine was Kim.

"'Ere you! 'Alt! Stop!" said a high voice at his heels. "I've got to
look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where
are you goin'?"

It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the
forenoon- a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed
him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons.

"To the bazar- to get sweets- for you," said Kim, after thought.

"Well, the bazar's out o' bounds. If we go there we'll get a
dressing-down. You come back."

"How near can we go?" Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he
wished to be polite- for the present.

"'Ow near? 'Ow far, you mean? We can go as far as that tree down the
road."

"Then I will go there."

"All right. I ain't goin'. It's too 'ot. I can watch you from
'ere. It's no good runnin' away. If you did, they'd spot you by your
clothes. That's regimental stuff you're wearin'. There ain't a
picket in Umballa wouldn't 'ead you back quicker than you started
out."

This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment
would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at
the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the
natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest
caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of
unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy
could not follow. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his
fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse
somebody in the tongue he knew best. "And now, go to the nearest
letter-writer in the bazar and tell him to come here. I would write
a letter."

"But- but what manner of white man's son art thou, to need a bazar
letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?"

"Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you- you Od!
Thy mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg" (Kim knew
the god of the sweepers), "run on my business or we will talk again."

The sweeper shuffled off in haste. There is a white boy by the
barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy," he stammered to
the first bazar letter-writer he came across. "He needs thee."

"Will he pay?" said that spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and
pens and sealing-wax all in order.

"I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well
worth."

Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight.
As soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.

"First I will take my pay," the letter-writer said. "Bad words
have made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion,
to speak in this fashion?"

"Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a
tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer will serve me. Umballa city
is as full of them as is Lahore."

"Four annas," said the writer, sitting down and spreading his
cloth in the shade of a deserted barrack-wing.

"Mechanically Kim squatted beside him- squatted as only the
natives can- in spite of the abominable clinging trousers.

The writer regarded him sideways.

"That is the price to ask of Sahibs," said Kim. "Now fix me a true
one."

"An anna and a half. How do I know, having written the letter,
that thou wilt not run away?"

"I must not go beyond this tree, and there is also the stamp to be
considered."

"I get no commission on the price of the stamp. Once more, what
manner of white boy art thou?"

"That shall be said in the letter, which is to Mahbub Ali, the
horse-dealer in the Kashmir Serai, at Lahore. He is my friend."

"Wonder on wonder!" murmured the letter-writer, dipping a reed in
the inkstand. "To be written in Hindi?"

"Assuredly. To Mahbub Ali then. Begin! 'I have come down with the
old man as far as Umballa in the train. At Umballa I carried the
news of the bay mare's pedigree.'" After what he had seen in the
garden, he was not going to write of white stallions.

"Slower a little. What has a bay mare to do.... Is it Mahbub Ali the
great dealer?"

"Who else? I have been in his service. Take more ink. Again. 'As the
order was, so I did it. We then went on foot towards Benares, but on
the third day we found a certain regiment.' Is that down?"

"Ay, 'pulton,'" murmured the writer, all ears.

"'I went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm
about my neck, which thou knowest, it was established that I was the
son of some man in the regiment: according to the prophecy of the
Red Bull, which thou knowest was common talk of our bazar.'" Kim
waited for this shaft to sink into the letter-writer's heart,
cleared his throat, and continued: "'A priest clothed me and gave me a
new name.... One priest, however, was a fool. The clothes are very
heavy, but I am a Sahib and my heart is heavy too. They send me to a
school and beat me. I do not like the air and water here. Come then
and help me, Mahbub Ali, or send me some money, for I have not
sufficient to pay the writer who writes this."

"'Who writes this.' It is my own fault that I was tricked. Thou
art as clever as Husain Bux that forged the Treasury stamps at
Nucklao. But what a tale! What a tale! Is it true by any chance?"

"It does not profit to tell lies to Mahbub Ali. It is better to help
his friends by lending them a stamp. When the money comes I will
repay."

The writer grunted doubtfully, but took a stamp out of his desk,
sealed the letter, handed it over to Kim, and departed. Mahbub Ali's
was a name of power in Umballa.

"That is the way to win a good account with the Gods," Kim shouted
after him.

"Pay me twice over when the money comes," the man cried over his
shoulder.

"What was you bukkin' to that nigger about?" said the drummer-boy
when Kim returned to the veranda. "I was watchin' you."

"I was only talkin' to him."

"You talk the same as a nigger, don't you?"

"No-ah! No-ah! I onlee speak a little. What shall we do now?"

"The bugles 'ill go for dinner in arf a minute. My Gawd! I wish
I'd gone up to the front with the regiment. It's awful doin' nothin'
but school down 'ere. Don't you 'ate it?"

"Oah yess!"

"I'd run away if I knew where to go to, but, as the men say, in this
bloomin' Injia you're only a prisoner at large. You can't desert
without bein' took back at once. I'm fair sick of it."

"You have been in Be- England?"

"W'y, I only come out last troopin' season with my mother. I
should think I 'ave been in England. What a ignorant little beggar you
are. You was brought up in the gutter, wasn't you?"

"Oah yess. Tell me something about England. My father he came from
there."

Though he would not say so, Kim of course disbelieved every word the
drummer-boy spoke about the Liverpool suburb which was his England. It
passed the heavy time till dinner- a most unappetising meal served
to the boys and a few invalids in a corner of a barrack-room. But that
he had written to Mahbub Ali, Kim would have been almost depressed.
The indifference of native crowds he was used to; but this strong
loneliness among white men preyed on him. He was grateful when, in the
course of the afternoon, a big soldier took him over to Father Victor,
who lived in another wing across another dusty parade-ground. The
priest was reading an English letter written in purple ink. He
looked at Kim more curiously than ever.

"An' how do you like it, my son, as far as you've gone? Not much,
eh? It must be hard- very hard on a wild animal. Listen now. I've an
amazin' epistle from your friend."

"Where is he? Is he well? Oah! If he knows to write me letters, it
is all right."

"You're fond of him then?"

"Of course I am fond of him. He was fond of me."

"It seems so by the look of this. He can't write English, can he?"

"Oah no. Not that I know, but of course he found a letter-writer who
can write English verree well, and so he wrote. I do hope you
understand."

"That accounts for it. D'you know anything about money affairs?"
Kim's face showed that he did not.

"How can I tell?"

"That's what I'm askin'. Now listen if you can make head or tail
o' this. We'll skip the first part.... It's written from Jagadhir
Road.... 'Sitting on wayside in grave meditation, trusting to be
favoured with your Honour's applause of present step, which
recommend your Honour to execute for Almighty God's sake. Education is
greatest blessing if of best sorts. Otherwise no earthly use.'
Faith, the old man's hit the bull's-eye that time! 'If your Honour
condescending giving my boy best educations Xavier' (I suppose
that's St. Xavier's in Partibus) 'in terms of our conversation dated
in your tent 15th instant' (a business-like touch there!) 'then
Almighty God blessing your Honour's succeedings to third an' fourth
generation and'- now listen!- 'confide in your Honour's humble servant
for adequate remuneration per hoondie per annum three hundred rupees a
year to one expensive education St. Xavier, Lucknow, and allow small
time to forward same per hoondie sent to any part of India as your
Honour shall address yourself. This servant of your Honour has
presently no place to lay crown of his head, but going to Benares by
train on account of persecution of old woman talking so much and
unanxious residing Saharunpore in any domestic capacity.' Now what
in the world does that mean?"

"She has asked him to be puro- her clergyman- at Saharunpore, I
think. He would not do that on account of his River. She did talk."

"It's clear to you, is it? It beats me altogether. 'So going to
Benares, where will find address and forward rupees for boy who is
apple of eye, and for Almighty God's sake execute this education,
and your petitioner as in duty bound shall ever awfully pray.
Written by Sobrao Satai, Failed Entrance Allahabad University, for
Venerable Teshoo Lama the priest of Suchzen looking for a River,
address care of Tirthankers' Temple, Benares. P.M.- Please note boy is
apple of eye, and rupees shall be sent per hoondie three hundred per
annum. For God Almighty's sake.' Now, is that ravin' lunacy or a
business proposition? I ask you, because I'm fairly at my wits' end."

"He says he will give me three hundred rupees a year, so he will
give me them."

"Oh, that's the way you look at it, is it?"

"Of course. If he says so!"

The priest whistled; then he addressed Kim as an equal.

"I don't believe it; but we'll see. You were goin' off to-day to the
Military Orphanage at Sanawar, where the regiment would keep you
till you were old enough to enlist. Ye'd be brought up to the Church
of England. Bennett arranged for that. On the other hand, if ye go
to St. Xavier's ye'll get a better education an'- an' can have the
religion. D'ye see my dilemma?"

Kim saw nothing save a vision of the lama going south in a train
with none to beg for him.

Like most people, I'm going to temporise. If your friend sends the
money from Benares- Powers of Darkness below, where's a
street-beggar to raise three hundred rupees?- ye'll go down to Lucknow
and I'll pay your fare, because I can't touch the subscription-money
if I intend, as I do, to make ye a Catholic. If he doesn't, ye'll go
to the Military Orphanage at the regiment's expense. I'll allow him
three days' grace, though I don't believe it at all. Even then, if
he fails in his payments later on... but it's beyond me. We can only
walk one step at a time in this world, praise God! An' they sent
Bennett to the front an' left me behind. Bennett can't expect
anything."

"Oah yess," said Kim vaguely.

The priest leaned forward. "I'd give a month's pay to find what's
goin' on inside that little round head of yours."

"There is nothing," said Kim, and scratched it. He was wondering
whether Mahbub Ali would send him as much as a whole rupee. Then he
could pay the letter-writer and write letters to the lama at
Benares. Perhaps Mahbub Ali would visit him next time he came south
with horses. Surely he must know that Kim's delivery of the letter
to the officer at Umballa had caused the great war which the men and
boys had discussed so loudly over the barrack dinner-tables. But if
Mahbub Ali did not know this, it would be very unsafe to tell him
so. Mahbub Ali was hard upon boys who knew, or thought they knew,
too much.

"Well, till I get further news"- Father Victor's voice interrupted
the reverie- "ye can run along and play with the other boys. They'll
teach ye something- but I don't think ye'll like it."

The day dragged to its weary end. When he wished to sleep he was
instructed how to fold up his clothes and set out his boots; the other
boys deriding. Bugles waked him in the dawn; the schoolmaster caught
him after breakfast, thrust a page of meaningless characters under his
nose, gave them senseless names, and whacked him without reason. Kim
meditated poisoning him with opium borrowed from a barrack-sweeper,
but reflected that, as they all ate at one table in public (this was
peculiarly revolting to Kim, who preferred to turn his back on the
world at his meals), the stroke might be dangerous. Then he
attempted running off to the village where the priest had tried to
drug the lama- the village where the old soldier lived. But far-seeing
sentries at every exit headed back the little scarlet figure. Trousers
and jacket crippled body and mind alike, so he abandoned the project
and fell back, Oriental fashion, on time and chance. Three days of
torment passed in the big, echoing white rooms. He walked out of
afternoons under escort of the drummer-boy, and all he heard from
his companion were the few useless words which seemed to make
two-thirds of the white man's abuse. Kim knew and despised them all
long ago. The boy resented his silence and lack of interest by beating
him, as was only natural. He did not care for any of the bazars
which were in bounds. He styled all natives "niggers"; yet servants
and sweepers called him abominable names to his face, and, misled by
their deferential attitude, he never understood. This somewhat
consoled Kim for the beatings.

On the morning of the fourth day a judgment overtook that drummer.
They had gone out together towards Umballa race-course. He returned
alone, weeping, with news that young O'Hara, to whom he had been doing
nothing in particular, had hailed a scarlet-bearded nigger on
horseback; that the nigger had then and there laid into him with a
peculiarly adhesive quirt, picked up young O'Hara, and borne him off
at full gallop. These tidings came to Father Victor, and he drew
down his long upper lip. He was already sufficiently startled by a
letter from the Temple of the Tirthankers at Benares, enclosing a
native banker's note of hand for three hundred rupees, and an
amazing prayer to "Almighty God." The lama would have been more
annoyed than the priest had he known how the bazar letter-writer had
translated his phrase "to acquire merit."

"Powers of Darkness below!" Father Victor fumbled with the note.
"An' now he's off with another of his peep-o'-day friends. I don't
know whether it will be a greater relief to me to get him back or to
have him lost. He's beyond my comprehension. How the Divil- yes,
He's the man I mean- can a street-beggar raise money to educate
white boys?"

Three miles on Umballa race-course, Mahbub Ali, reining a gray
Cabuli stallion with Kim in front of him, was saying:

"But, Little Friend of all the World, there is my honour and
reputation to be considered. All the officer-sahibs in all the
regiments, and all Umballa, know Mahbub Ali. Men saw me pick thee up
and chastise that boy. We are seen now from far across this plain. How
can I take thee away, or account for thy disappearing if I set thee
down and let thee run off into the crops? They would put me in jail.
Be patient. Once a Sahib, always a Sahib. When thou art a man- who
knows- thou wilt be grateful to Mahbub Ali."

"Take me beyond their sentries where I can change this red. Give
me money and I will go to Benares and be with my lama again. I do
not want to be a Sahib, and remember I did deliver that message."

The stallion bounded wildly. Mahbub Ali had incautiously driven home
the sharp-edged stirrup. (He was not the new sort of fluent
horse-dealer who wears English boots and spurs.) Kim drew his own
conclusions from that betrayal.

"That was a small matter. It lay on the road to Benares. I and the
Sahib have by this time forgotten it. I send so many letters and
messages to men who ask questions about horses, I cannot well remember
one from the other. Was it some matter of a bay mare that Peters Sahib
wished the pedigree of?"

Kim saw the trap at once. If he had said "bay mare" Mahbub would
have known by his very readiness to fall in with the amendment that
the boy suspected something. Kim replied therefore:

"Bay mare? No. I do not forget my messages thus. It was a white
stallion."

"Ay, so it was. A white Arab stallion. But thou didst write bay mare
to me."

"Who cares to tell truth to a letter-writer?" Kim answered,
feeling Mahbub's palm on his heart.

"Hi! Mahbub, you old villain, pull up!" cried a voice, and an
Englishman raced alongside on a little polo-pony. "I've been chasing
you half over the country. That Cabuli of yours can go. For sale, I
suppose?"

"I have some young stuff coming on made by Heaven for the delicate
and difficult polo-game. He has no equal. He-"

"Plays polo and waits at table. Yes. We know all that. What the
deuce have you got there?"

"A boy," said Mahbub gravely. He was being beaten by another boy.
His father was once a white soldier in the big war. The boy was a
child in Lahore city. He played with my horses when he was a babe. Now
I think they will make him a soldier. He has been newly caught by
his father's regiment that went up to the war last week. But I do
not think he wants to be a soldier. I take him for a ride. Tell me
where thy barracks are and I will set thee there."

"Let me go. I can find the barracks alone."

"And if thou runnest away who will say it is not my fault?"

"He'll run back to his dinner. Where has he to run to?" the
Englishman asked.

"He was born in the land. He has friends. He goes where he
chooses. He is a chabuk sawai (a sharp chap). It needs only to
change his clothing, and in a twinkling he would be a low-caste
Hindi boy."

"The deuce he would!" The Englishman looked critically at the boy as
Mahbub headed towards the barracks. Kim ground his teeth. Mahbub was
mocking him, as faithless Afghans will; for he went on:

"They will send him to a school and put heavy boots on his feet
and swaddle him in these clothes. Then he will forget all he knows.
Now which of the barracks is thine?"

Kim pointed- he could not speak- to Father Victor's wing, all
staring white near by.

"Perhaps he will make a good soldier," said Mahbub reflectively. "He
will make a good orderly at least. I sent him to deliver a message
once from Lahore. A message concerning the pedigree of a white
stallion."

Here was deadly insult on deadlier injury- and the Sahib to whom
he had so craftily given that war-making letter heard it all. Kim
beheld Mahbub Ali frying in flame for his treachery, but for himself
he saw one long gray vista of barracks, schools, and barracks again.
He gazed imploringly at the clear-cut face in which there was no
glimmer of recognition; but even at this extremity it never occurred
to him to throw himself on the white man's mercy or to denounce the
Afghan. And Mahbub stared deliberately at the Englishman, who stared
as deliberately at Kim, quivering and tongue-tied.

"My horse is well trained," said the dealer. "Others would have
kicked, Sahib."

"Ah," said the Englishman at last, rubbing his pony's damp withers
with his whip-butt. "Who makes the boy a soldier?"

"He says the regiment that found him, and especially the padre-sahib
of that regiment."

"There is the padre!" Kim choked as bare-headed Father Victor sailed
down upon them from the veranda.

"Powers o' Darkness below, O'Hara! How many more mixed friends do
you keep in Asia?" he cried, as Kim slid down and stood helplessly
before him.

"Good morning, Padre," the Colonel said cheerily. "I know you by
reputation well enough. Meant to have come over and called before
this. I'm Creighton."

"Of the Ethnological Survey?" said Father Victor. The Colonel
nodded. "Faith I'm glad to meet ye then; an' I owe you some thanks for
bringing back the boy."

"No thanks to me, Padre. Besides, the boy wasn't going away. You
don't know old Mahbub Ali"- the horse-dealer sat impassive in the
sunlight. "You will when you have been in the station a month. He
sells us all our crocks. That boy is rather a curiosity. Can you
tell me anything about him?"

"Can I tell you?" puffed Father Victor. "You'll be the one man
that could help me in my quandaries. Tell you! Powers o' Darkness, I'm
bursting to tell some one who knows something o' the native!"

A groom came round the corner. Colonel Creighton raised his voice,
speaking in Urdu. "Very good, Mahbub Ali, but what is the use of
telling me all those stories about the pony. Not one pie more than
three hundred and fifty rupees will I give."

"The Sahib is a little hot and angry after riding," the horse-dealer
returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. "Presently, he will
see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished
his talk with the padre. I will wait under that tree."

"Confound you!" The Colonel laughed. "That comes of looking at one
of Mahbub's horses. He's a regular old leech, Padre. Wait then, if
thou hast so much time to spare, Mahbub. Now I'm at your service,
Padre. Where is the boy? Oh, he's gone off to collogue with Mahbub.
Queer sort of boy. Might I ask you to send my mare round under cover?"

He dropped into a chair which commanded a clear view of Kim and
Mahbub Ali in conference beneath the tree. The padre went indoors
for cheroots.

Creighton heard Kim say bitterly: "Trust a Brahmin before a snake,
and a snake before a harlot, and a harlot before an Afghan, Mahbub
Ali."

"That is all one," the great red beard wagged solemnly. "Children
should not see a carpet on the loom till the pattern is made plain.
Believe me, Friend of all the World, I do thee great service. They
will not make a soldier of thee."

"You crafty old sinner," thought Creighton. "But you're not far
wrong. That boy mustn't be wasted if he is as advertised."

"Excuse me half a minute," cried the padre from within, "but I'm
gettin' the documents of the case."

"If through me the favour of this bold and wise Colonel Sahib
comes to thee, and thou art raised to honour, what thanks will thou
give Mahbub Ali when thou art a man?"

"Nay, nay; I begged thee to let me take the road again, where I
should have been safe; and thou hast sold me back to the English. What
will they give thee for blood-money?"

"A cheerful young demon!" The Colonel bit his cigar, and turned
politely to Father Victor.

"What are the letters that the fat priest is waving before the
Colonel? Stand behind the stallion as though looking at my bridle!"
said Mahbub Ali.

"A letter from my lama which he wrote from Jagadhir Road, saying
that he will pay three hundred rupees by the year for my schooling."

"Oho! Is old Red Hat of that sort? At which school?"

"God knows. I think in Nucklao."

"Yes. There is a big school there for the sons of Sahibs- and
half-Sahibs. I have seen it when I sell horses there. So the lama also
loved the Friend of all the World?"

"Ay; and he did not tell lies, or return me to captivity."

"Small wonder the padre does not know how to unravel the thread. How
fast he talks to the Colonel Sahib." Mahbub Ali chuckled. "By Allah!"-
the keen eyes swept the veranda for an instant- "thy lama has sent
what to me looks like a note of hand. I have had some small dealing in
hoondies. The Colonel Sahib is looking at it."

"What good is all this to me?" said Kim wearily. "Thou wilt go away,
and they will return me to those empty rooms where there is no good
place to sleep and where the boys beat me."

"I do not think that. Have patience, child. All Pathans are not
faithless- except in horseflesh."

Five- ten- fifteen minutes passed, Father Victor talking
energetically or asking questions which the Colonel answered.

"Now I've told you everything that I know about the boy from
beginnin' to end; and it's a blessed relief to me. Did ye ever hear
the like?"

"At any rate, the old man has sent the money. Gobind Sahai's notes
of hand are good from here to China," said the Colonel. "The more
one knows about natives the less can one say what they will or won't
do."

"That's consolin'- from the head of the Ethnological Survey. It's
this mixture of Red Bulls and Rivers of Healing (poor heathen, God
help him!) an' notes of hand and Masonic certificates. Are you a
Mason, by any chance?"

"By Jove, I am, now I come to think of it. That's an additional
reason," said the Colonel absently.

"I'm glad ye see a reason in it. But as I said, it's the mixture
o' things that's beyond me. An' his prophesying' to our Colonel
sitting on my bed with his little shimmy torn open showing his white
skin; an' the prophecy comin' true! They'll cure all that nonsense
at St. Xavier's, eh?"

"Sprinkle him with holy water," the Colonel laughed.

"On my word, I fancy I ought to sometimes. But I'm hoping he'll be
brought up as a good Catholic. All that troubles me is what'll
happen if the old beggar-man- "

"Lama, lama, my dear sir; and some of them are gentlemen in their
own country."

"The lama, then, fails to pay next year. He's a fine business head
to plan on the spur of the moment, but he's bound to die some day. An'
takin' a heathen's money to give a child a Christian education- "

"But he said explicitly what he wanted. As soon as he knew the boy
was white he seems to have made his arrangements accordingly. I'd give
a month's pay to hear how he explained it all at the Tirthankers'
Temple at Benares. Look here, Padre, I don't pretend to know much
about natives, but if he says he'll pay, he'll pay- dead or alive. I
mean his heirs will assume the debt. My advice to you is, send the boy
down to Lucknow. If your Anglican chaplain thinks you've stolen a
march on him- "

"Bad luck to Bennett! He was sent to the front instead o' me.
Doughty certified me medically unfit. I'll excommunicate Doughty if he
comes back alive! Surely Bennett ought to be content with- "

"Glory, leaving you the religion. Quite so! As a matter of fact I
don't think Bennett will mind. Put the blame on me. I- er- strongly
recommend sending the boy to St. Xavier's. He can go down on pass as a
soldier's orphan, so the railway fare will be saved. You can buy him
an outfit from the regimental subscription. The Lodge will be saved
the expense of his education, and that will put the Lodge in a good
temper. It's perfectly easy. I've got to go down to Lucknow next week.
I'll look after the boy on the way- give him in charge of my servants,
and so on."

"You're a good man."

"Not in the least. Don't make that mistake. The lama has sent us
money for a definite end. We can't very well return it. We shall
have to do as he says. Well, that's settled, isn't it? Shall we say
that, Tuesday next, you'll hand him over to me at the night train
south? That's only three days. He can't do much harm in three days."

"It's a weight off my mind, but- this thing here?"- he waved the
note of hand- "I don't know Gobind Sahai: or his bank, which may be
a hole in a wall."

"You've never been a subaltern in debt. I'll cash it if you like,
and send you the vouchers in proper order."

"But with all your own work too! It's askin'- "

"It's not the least trouble indeed. You see, as an ethnologist,
the thing's very interesting to me. I'd like to make a note of it
for some Government work that I'm doing. The transformation of a
regimental badge like your Red Bull into a sort of fetish that the boy
follows is very interesting."

"But I can't thank you enough."

"There's one thing you can do. All we Ethnological men are as
jealous as jackdaws of one another's discoveries. They're of no
interest to anyone but ourselves, of course, but you know what
book-collectors are like. Well, don't say a word, directly or
indirectly, about the Asiatic side of the boy's character- his
adventures and his prophecy, and so on. I'll worm them out of the
boy later on and- you see?"

"I do. Ye'll make a wonderful account of it. Never a word will I say
to any one till I see it in print."

"Thank you. That goes straight to an ethnologist's heart. Well, I
must be getting back to my breakfast. Good heavens! Old Mahbub here
still?" He raised his voice, and the horse-dealer came out from
under the shadow of the tree. "Well, what is it?"

"As regards that young horse," said Mahbub, "I say that when a
colt is born to be a polo-pony, closely following the ball without
teaching- when such a colt knows the game by divination- then I say it
is a great wrong to break that colt to a heavy cart, Sahib!"

"So do I say also, Mahbub. The colt will be entered for polo only.
(These fellows think of nothing in the world but horses, Padre.)
I'll see you to-morrow, Mahbub, if you've anything likely for sale."

The dealer saluted, horseman fashion, with a sweep of the off
hand. "Be patient a little, Friend of all the World," he whispered
to the agonised Kim. "Thy fortune is made. In a little while thou
goest to Nucklao, and- here is something to pay the letter-writer. I
shall see thee again, I think, many times," and he cantered off down
the road.

"Listen to me," said the Colonel from the veranda, speaking in the
vernacular. In three days thou wilt go with me to Lucknow, seeing
and hearing new things all the while. Therefore sit still for three
days and do not run away. Thou wilt go to school at Lucknow."

"Shall I meet my Holy One there?" Kim whimpered.

"At least Lucknow is nearer to Benares than Umballa. It may be
thou wilt go under my protection. Mahbub Ali knows this, and he will
be angry if thou returnest to the road now. Remember- much has been
told to me which I do not forget."

"I will wait," said Kim, "but the boys will beat me."

Then the bugles blew for dinner.

                                 7


         Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised
           With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
         Creep thou betweene- thy coming's all unnoised.
           Heaven hath her high, as earth her baser, wars.
         Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
           (By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);
         Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
           Which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars!
                                   " SIR  JOHN  CHRISTIE "


In the afternoon the red-faced schoolmaster told Kim that he had
been "struck off the strength," which conveyed no meaning to him
till he was ordered to go away and play. Then he ran to the bazar, and
found the young letter-writer to whom he owed a stamp.

"Now I pay," said Kim royally, "and now I need another letter to
be written."

"Mahbub Ali is in Umballa," said the writer jauntily. He was, by
virtue of his office, a bureau of general misinformation.

"This is not to Mahbub, but to a priest. Take thy pen and write
quickly. 'To Teshoo Lama, the holy one from Bhotiyal seeking for a
River, who is now in the Temple of the Tirthankers at Benares.' Take
more ink! 'In three days I am to go down to Nucklao to the school at
Nucklao. The name of the school is Xavier. I do not know where that
school is, but it is at Nucklao.'"

"But I know Nucklao," the writer interrupted. "I know the school."

"Tell him where it is, and I give half an anna."

The reed pen scratched busily. "He cannot mistake." The man lifted
his head. "Who watches us across the street?"

Kim looked up hurriedly and saw Colonel Creighton in
tennis-flannels.

"Oh, that is some Sahib who knows the fat priest in the barracks. He
is beckoning me."

"What dost thou?" said the Colonel, when Kim trotted up.

"I- I am not running away. I send a letter to my Holy One at
Benares."

"I had not thought of that. Hast thou said that I take thee to
Lucknow?"

"Nay, I have not. Read the letter, if there be a doubt."

"Then why hast thou left out my name in writing to that Holy One?"
The Colonel smiled a queer smile. Kim took his courage in both hands.

"It was said once to me that it is inexpedient to write the names of
strangers concerned in any matter, because by the naming of names many
good plans are brought to confusion."

"Thou hast been well taught," the Colonel replied, and Kim
flushed. "I have left my cheroot-case on the padre's veranda. Bring it
to my house this even."

"Where is the house?" said Kim. His quick wit told him that he was
being tested in some fashion or another, and he stood on guard.

"Ask anyone in the big bazar." The Colonel walked on.

"He has forgotten his cheroot-case," said Kim, returning. "I must
bring it to him this evening. That is all my letter except, thrice
over, 'Come to me! Come to me! Come to me!' Now I will pay for a stamp
and put it in the post." He rose to go, and as an afterthought
asked, "Who is that angry-faced Sahib who lost the cheroot-case?"

"Oh, he is only Creighton Sahib- a very foolish Sahib, who is a
Colonel Sahib without a regiment."

"What is his business?"

"God knows. He is always buying horses which he cannot ride, and
asking riddles about the works of God- such as plants and stones and
the customs of people. The dealers call him the father of fools,
because he is so easily cheated about a horse. Mahbub Ali says he is
madder than all other Sahibs."

"Oh!" said Kim, and departed. His training had given him some
small knowledge of character, and he argued that fools are not given
information which leads to calling out eight thousand men, besides
guns. The Commander-in-Chief of all India does not talk, as Kim had
heard him talk, to fools. Nor would Mahbub Ali's tone have changed, as
it did every time he mentioned the Colonel's name, if the Colonel
had been a fool. Consequently- and this set Kim to skipping- there was
a mystery somewhere, and Mahbub Ali probably spied for the Colonel
much as Kim had spied for Mahbub. And, like the horse-dealer, the
Colonel evidently respected people who did not show themselves to be
too clever.

He rejoiced that he had not betrayed his knowledge of the
Colonel's house; and when, on his return to barracks, he discovered
that no cheroot-case had been left behind, he beamed with delight.
Here was a man after his own heart- a tortuous and indirect person
playing a hidden game. Well, if he could be a fool, so could Kim.

He showed nothing of his mind when Father Victor, for three long
mornings, discoursed to him of an entirely new set of gods and
godlings- notably of a goddess called Mary, who, he gathered, was
one with Bibi Miriam of Mahbub Ali's theology. He betrayed no
emotion when, after the lecture, Father Victor dragged him from shop
to shop buying articles of outfit, nor when envious drummer-boys
kicked him because he was going to a superior school did he
complain, but awaited the play of circumstances with an interested
soul. Father Victor, good man, took him to the station, put him into
an empty second-class next to Colonel Creighton's first, and bade
him farewell with genuine feeling.

"They'll make a man o' you, O'Hara, at St. Xavier's- a white man,
an', I hope, a good man. They know all about your comin', an' the
Colonel will see that ye're not lost or mislaid anywhere on the
road. I've given you a notion of religious matters- at least I hope
so- and you'll remember, when they ask you your religion, that
you're a Cath'lic. Better say Roman Cath'lic, tho' I'm not fond of the
word.

Kim lit a rank cigarette- he had been careful to buy a stock in
the bazar- and lay down to think. This solitary passage was very
different from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the
lama. "Sahibs get little pleasure of travel," he reflected. "Hai
mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kick-ball. It
is my Kismet. No man can escape his Kismet. But I am to pray to Bibi
Miriam and I am a Sahib"- he looked at his boots ruefully. "No; I am
Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?" He
considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till
his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring
whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.

Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So
far as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey of
India as a chain-man. If he were very good, and passed the proper
examinations, he would be earning thirty rupees a month at seventeen
years old, and Colonel Creighton would see that he found a suitable
employment.

Kim pretended at first to understand perhaps one word in three of
this talk. Then the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent
and picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who
knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and
whose eyes were so different from the dull fat eyes of other Sahibs.

"Yes, and thou must learn how to make pictures of roads and
mountains and rivers- to carry these pictures in thy eye till a
suitable time comes to set them upon paper. Perhaps some day, when
thou art a chain-man, I may say to thee when we are working
together: 'Go across those hills and see what lies beyond.' Then one
will say: 'There are bad people living in those hills who will slay
the chain-man if he be seen to look like a Sahib.' What then?"

Kim thought. Would it be safe to return the Colonel's lead?

"I would tell what that other man had said."

"But if I answered: 'I will give thee a hundred rupees for knowledge
of what is behind those hills- for a picture of a river and a little
news of what the people say in the villages there'?"

"How can I tell? I am only a boy. Wait till I am a man." Then,
seeing the Colonel's brow clouded, he went on: "But I think I should
in a few days earn the hundred rupees."

"By what road?"

Kim shook his head resolutely. "If I said how I would earn them,
another man might hear and forestall me. It is no good to sell
knowledge for nothing."

"Tell now." The Colonel held up a rupee. Kim's hand half reached
towards it, and dropped.

"Nay, Sahib; nay. I know the price that will be paid for the answer,
but I do not know why the question is asked."

"Take it for a gift, then," said Creighton, tossing it over.
"There is a good spirit in thee. Do not let it be blunted at St.
Xavier's. There are many boys there who despise the black men."

"Their mothers were bazar-women," said Kim. He knew well there is no
hatred like that of the half-caste for his brother-in-law.

"True; but thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Therefore, do
not at any time be led to contemn the black men. I have known boys
newly entered into the service of the Government who feigned not to
understand the talk or the customs of black men. Their pay was cut for
ignorance. There is no sin so great as ignorance. Remember this."

Several times in the course of the long twenty-four hours' run south
did the Colonel send for Kim, always developing this latter text.

"We be all on one lead-rope, then," said Kim at last, "the
Colonel, Mahbub Ali, and I- when I become a chain-man. He will use
me as Mahbub Ali employed me, I think. That is good, if it allows me
to return to the road again. This clothing grows no easier by wear."

When they came to the crowded Lucknow station there was no sign of
the lama. He swallowed his disappointment, while the Colonel bundled
him into a ticca-garri with his neat belongings and despatched him
alone to St. Xavier's.

"I do not say farewell, because we shall meet again," he cried.
"Again, and many times, if thou art one of good spirit. But thou art
not yet tried."

"Not when I brought thee"- Kim actually dared to use the tum of
equals- "a white stallion's pedigree that night?"

"Much is gained by forgetting, little brother," said the Colonel,
with a look that pierced through Kim's shoulder-blades as he
scuttled into the carriage.

It took him nearly five minutes to recover. Then he sniffed the
new air appreciatively. "A rich city," he said. "Richer than Lahore.
How good the bazars must be! Coachman, drive me a little through the
bazars here."

"My order is to take thee to the school." The driver used the
"thou," which is rudeness when applied to a white man. In the clearest
and most fluent vernacular Kim pointed out his error, climbed on to
the box-seat, and, perfect understanding established, drove for a
couple of hours up and down, estimating, comparing, and enjoying.
There is no city- except Bombay, the queen of all- more beautiful in
her garish style than Lucknow, whether you see her from the bridge
over the river, or from the top of the Imambara looking down on the
gilt umbrellas of the Chutter Munzil, and the trees in which the
town is bedded. Kings have adorned her with fantastic buildings,
endowed her with charities, crammed her with pensioners, and
drenched her with blood. She is the centre of all idleness,
intrigue, and luxury, and shares with Delhi the claim to talk the only
pure Urdu.

"A fair city- a beautiful city." The driver, as a Lucknow man, was
pleased with the compliment, and told Kim many astounding things where
an English guide would have talked of the Mutiny.

"Now we will go to the school," said Kim at last. The great old
school of St. Xavier's in Partibus, block on block of low white
buildings, stands in vast grounds over against the Gumti River, at
some distance from the city.

"What like of folk are they within?" said Kim.

"Young Sahibs- all devils; but to speak truth, and I drive many of
them to and fro from the railway station, I have never seen one that
had in him the making of a more perfect devil than thou- this young
Sahib whom I am now driving."

Naturally, for he was never trained to consider them in any way
improper, Kim had passed the time of day with one or two frivolous
ladies at upper windows in a certain street, and naturally, in the
exchange of compliments, had acquitted himself well. He was about to
acknowledge the driver's last insolence, when his eye- it was
growing dusk- caught a figure sitting by one of the white plaster
gate-pillars in the long sweep of wall.

"Stop!" he cried. "Stay here! I do not go to the school at once."

"But what is to pay me for this coming and recoming?" said the
driver petulantly. "Is the boy mad? Last time it was a dancing-girl.
This time it is a priest."

Kim was in the road headlong, patting the dusty feet beneath the
dirty yellow robe.

"I have waited here a day and a half," the lama's level voice began.
"Nay, I had a disciple with me. He that was my friend at the temple of
the Tirthankers gave me a guide for this journey. I came from
Benares in the train, when thy letter was given me. Yes, I am well
fed. I need nothing."

"But why didst thou not stay with the Kulu woman, O Holy One? In
what way didst thou get to Benares? My heart has been heavy since we
parted."

"The woman wearied me by constant flux of talk and requiring
charms for children. I separated myself from that company,
permitting her to acquire merit by gifts. She is at least a woman of
open hands, and I made a promise to return to her house if need arose.
Then, perceiving myself alone in this great and terrible world, I
bethought me of the te-rain to Benares, where I knew one abode in
the Tirthankers' Temple who was a Seeker, even as I."

"Ah! Thy River," said Kim. "I had forgotten the River."

"So soon, my chela? I have never forgotten it; but when I had left
thee it seemed better that I should go to the temple and take counsel,
for, look you, India is very large, and it may be that wise men before
us, some two or three, have left a record of the place of our River.
There is debate in the Temple of the Tirthankers on this matter;
some saying one thing, and some another. They are courteous folk."

"So be it; but what dost thou do now?"

"I acquire merit in that I help thee, my chela, to wisdom. The
priest of that body of men who serve the Red Bull wrote me that all
should be as I desired for thee. I sent the money to suffice for one
year, and then I came, as thou seest me, to watch for thee going up
into the Gates of Learning. A day and a half have I waited- not
because I was led by any affection towards thee- that is not part of
the Way- but, as they said at the Tirthankers' Temple, because,
money having been paid for learning, it was right that I should
oversee the end of the matter. They resolved my doubts most clearly. I
had a fear that, perhaps, I came because I wished to see thee-
misguided by the red mist of affection. It is not so.... Moreover, I
am troubled by a dream."

"But surely, Holy One, thou hast not forgotten the Road and all that
befell on it? Surely it was a little to see me that thou didst come?"

"The horses are cold, and it is past their feeding-time," whined the
driver.

"Go to Jehannum and abide there with thy reputationless aunt!" Kim
snarled over his shoulder. "I am all alone in this land; I know not
where I go nor what shall befall me. My heart was in that letter I
sent thee. Except for Mahbub Ali, and he is a Pathan, I have no friend
save thee, Holy One. Do not altogether go away."

"I have considered that also," the lama replied, in a shaking voice.
"It is manifest that from time to time I shall acquire merit- if
before that I have not found my River- by assuring myself that thy
feet are set on wisdom. What they will teach thee I do not know, but
the priest wrote me that no son of a Sahib in all India will be better
taught than thou. So from time to time, therefore, I will come
again. May be thou wilt be such a Sahib as he who gave me these
spectacles"- the lama wiped them elaborately- "in the Wonder House
at Lahore. That is my hope, for he was a Fountain of Wisdom- wiser
than many abbots.... Again, may be thou wilt forget me and our
meetings."

"If I eat thy bread," cried Kim passionately, "how shall I ever
forget thee?"

"No- no." He put the boy aside. "I must go back to Benares. From
time to time, now that I know the customs of letter-writers in this
land, I will send thee a letter, and from time to time I will come and
see thee."

"But whither shall I send my letters?" wailed Kim, clutching at
the robe, all forgetful that he was a Sahib.

"To the Temple of the Tirthankers at Benares. That is the place I
have chosen till I find my River. Do not weep; for, look you, all
Desire is illusion and a new binding upon the Wheel. Go up to the
Gates of Learning. Let me see thee go.... Dost thou love me? Then
go, or my heart cracks.... I will come again. Surely I will come
again."

The lama watched the ticca-garri rumble into the compound, and
strode off, snuffing between each long stride.

"The Gates of Learning" shut with a clang.


The country born and bred boy has his own manners and customs, which
do not resemble those of any other land; and his teachers approach him
by roads which an English master would not understand. Therefore,
you would scarcely be interested in Kim's experiences as a St.
Xavier's boy among two or three hundred precocious youths, most of
whom had never seen the sea. He suffered the usual penalties for
breaking out of bounds when there was cholera in the city. This was
before he had learned to write fair English, and so was obliged to
find a bazar letter-writer. He was, of course, indicted for smoking
and for the use of abuse more full-flavoured than even St. Xavier's
had ever heard. He learned to wash himself with the Levitical
scrupulosity of the native-born, who in his heart considers the
Englishman rather dirty. He played the usual tricks on the patient
coolies pulling the punkahs in the sleeping-rooms where the boys
thrashed through the hot nights telling tales till the dawn; and
quietly he measured himself against his self-reliant mates.

They were sons of subordinate officials in the Railway, Telegraph,
and Canal services; of warrant-officers sometimes retired and
sometimes acting as commanders-in-chief to a feudatory Rajah's army;
of captains of the Indian Marine, Government pensioners, planters,
Presidency shopkeepers, and missionaries. A few were cadets of the old
Eurasian houses that have taken strong root in Dhurrumtollah-
Pereiras, De Souzas, and D'Silvas. Their parents could well have
educated them in England, but they loved the school that had served
their own youth, and generation followed sallow-hued generation at St.
Xavier's. Their homes ranged from Howrah of the railway people to
abandoned cantonments like Monghyr and Chunar; lost tea-gardens
Shillong-way; villages where their fathers were large landholders in
Oudh or the Deccan; Mission-stations a week from the nearest railway
line; seaports a thousand miles south, facing the brazen Indian
surf; and cinchona-plantations south of all. The mere story of their
adventures, which to them were no adventures, on their road to and
from school would have crisped a Western boy's hair. They were used to
jogging off alone through a hundred miles of jungle, where there was
always the delightful chance of being delayed by tigers; but they
would no more have bathed in the English Channel in an English
August than their brothers across the world would have lain still
while a leopard snuffed at their palanquin. There were boys of fifteen
who had spent a day and a half on an islet in the middle of a
flooded river, taking charge, as by right, of a camp of frantic
pilgrims returning from a shrine; there were seniors who had
requisitioned a chance-met Rajah's elephant, in the name of St.
Francis Xavier, when the rains once blotted out the cart-track that
led to their father's estate, and had all but lost the huge beast in a
quicksand. There was a boy who, he said, and none doubted, had
helped his father to beat off with rifles from the veranda a rush of
Akas in the days when those head-hunters were bold against lonely
plantations.

And every tale was told in the even, passionless voice of the
native-born, mixed with quaint reflections, borrowed unconsciously
from native foster-mothers, and turns of speech that showed they had
been that instant translated from the vernacular. Kim watched,
listened, and approved. This was not insipid, single-word talk of
drummer-boys. It dealt with a life he knew and in part understood. The
atmosphere suited him, and he throve by inches. They gave him a
white drill suit as the weather warmed, and he rejoiced in the
new-found bodily comforts as he rejoiced to use his sharpened mind
over the tasks they set him. His quickness would have delighted an
English master; but at St. Xavier's they know the first rush of
minds developed by sun and surroundings, as well as they know the
half-collapse that sets in at twenty-two or twenty-three.

None the less he remembered to hold himself lowly. When tales were
told of hot nights, Kim did not sweep the board with his
reminiscences; for St. Xavier's looks down on boys who "go native
altogether." One must never forget that one is a Sahib, and that
some day, when examinations are passed, one will command natives.
Kim made a note of this, for he began to understand where examinations
led.

Then came the holidays from August to October- the long holidays
imposed by the heat and the rains. Kim was informed that he would go
north to some station in the hills behind Umballa, where Father Victor
would arrange for him.

"A barrack-school?" said Kim, who had asked many questions and
thought more.

"Yes, I suppose so," said the master. "It will not do you any harm
to keep you out of mischief. You can go up with young De Castro as far
as Delhi."

Kim considered it in every possible light. He had been diligent,
even as the Colonel advised. A boy's holiday was his own property-
of so much the talk of his companions had advised him- and a
barrack-school would be torment after St. Xavier's. Moreover- this was
magic worth anything else- he could write. In three months he had
discovered how men can speak to each other without a third party, at
the cost of half an anna and a little knowledge. No word had come from
the lama, but there remained the Road. Kim yearned for the caress of
soft mud squishing up between the toes, as his mouth watered for
mutton stewed with butter and cabbages, for rice speckled with
strong-scented cardamoms, for the saffron-tinted rice, garlic and
onions, and the forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazars. They
would feed him raw beef on a platter at the barrack-school, and he
must smoke by stealth. But again, he was a Sahib and was at St.
Xavier's, and that pig Mahbub Ali... No, he would not test Mahbub's
hospitality- and yet... He thought it out alone in the dormitory,
and came to the conclusion he had been unjust to Mahbub.

The school was empty; nearly all the masters had gone away;
Colonel Creighton's railway-pass lay in his hand, and Kim puffed
himself that he had not spent Colonel Creighton's or Mahbub's money in
riotous living. He was still lord of two rupees seven annas. His new
bullock-trunk, marked "K. O'H.," and bedding-roll lay in the empty
sleeping-room. "Sahibs are always tied to their baggage," said Kim,
nodding at them. "You will stay here." He went out into the warm rain,
smiling sinfully, and sought a certain house whose outside he had
noted down some time before...

"Arre! Dost thou know what manner of women we be in this quarter?
O shame!"

"Was I born yesterday?" Kim squatted native fashion on the
cushions of that upper room. "A little dye-stuff and three yards of
cloth to help out a jest. Is it much to ask?"

"Who is she? Thou art full young, as Sahibs go, for this devilry."

"Oh, she? She is the daughter of a certain schoolmaster of a
regiment in the cantonments. He has beaten me twice because I went
over their wall in these clothes. Now I would go as a gardener's
boy. Old men are very jealous."

"That is true. Hold thy face still while I dab on the juice."

"Not too black, Naikan. I would not appear to her as a hubshi"
(nigger).

"Oh, love makes nought of these things. And how old is she?"

"Twelve years, I think," said the shameless Kim.- Spread it also
on the breast. It may be her father will tear my clothes off me and if
I am piebald-" he laughed.

The girl worked busily, dabbing a twist of cloth into a little
saucer of brown dye that holds longer than any walnut juice.

"Now send out and get me a cloth for the turban. Woe is me, my
head is all unshaved! And he will surely knock off my turban."

"I am not a barber, but I will make shift. Thou wast born to be a
breaker of hearts! All this disguise for one evening? Remember, the
stuff does not wash away." She shook with laughter till her
bracelets and anklets jingled. "But who is it pay me for this? Huneefa
herself could not have given thee better stuff."

"Trust in the Gods, my sister," said Kim gravely screwing his face
round as the stain dried. "Besides, hast thou ever helped to paint a
Sahib thus before?"

"Never indeed. But a jest is not money."

"It is worth much more."

"Child, thou art beyond all dispute the most shameless son of
Shaitan that I have ever known to take up a poor girl's time with this
play, and then to say: 'Is not the jest enough?' Thou wilt go very far
in this world." She gave the dancing-girls' salutation in mockery.

"All one. Make haste and rough-cut my head." Kim shifted from foot
to foot, his eyes ablaze with mirth as he thought of the fat days
before him. He gave the girl four annas, and ran down the stairs in
the likeness of a low-caste Hindu boy- perfect in every detail. A
cookshop was his next point of call, where he feasted in
extravagance and greasy luxury.

On Lucknow station platform he watched young De Castro, all
covered with prickly-heat, get into a second-class compartment. Kim
patronised a third, and was the life and soul of it. He explained to
the company that he was assistant to a juggler who had left him behind
sick with fever, and that he would pick up his master at Umballa. As
the occupants of the carriage changed, he varied this tale, or adorned
it with all the shoots of a budding fancy, the more rampant for
being held off native speech so long. In all India that night was no
human being so joyful as Kim. At Umballa he got out and headed
eastward, plashing over the sodden fields to the village where the old
soldier lived.

About this time Colonel Creighton at Simla was advised from
Lucknow by wire that young O'Hara had disappeared. Mahbub Ali was in
town selling horses, and to him the Colonel confided the affair one
morning cantering round Annandale race-course.

"Oh, that is nothing," said the horse-dealer. "Men are like
horses. At certain times they need salt, and if that salt is not in
the mangers they will lick it up from the earth. He has gone back to
the Road again for a while. The madrissah wearied him. I knew it
would. Another time, I will take him upon the Road myself. Do not be
troubled, Creighton Sahib. It is as though a polo-pony, breaking
loose, ran out to learn the game alone."

"Then he is not dead, think you?"

"Fever might kill him. I do not fear for the boy otherwise. A monkey
does not fall among trees."

Next morning, on the same course, Mahbub's stallion ranged alongside
the Colonel.

"It is as I had thought," said the horse-dealer. He has come through
Umballa at least, and there he has written a letter to me, having
learned in the bazar that I was here."

"Read," said the Colonel, with a sigh of relief. It was absurd
that a man of his position should take an interest in a little
country-bred vagabond; but the Colonel remembered the conversation
in the train, and often in the past few months had caught himself
thinking of the queer, silent, self-possessed boy. His evasion, of
course, was the height of insolence, but it argued some resource and
nerve.

Mahbub's eyes twinkled as he reined out into the centre of the
cramped little plain, where none could come near unseen.

"'The Friend of the Stars, who is the Friend of all the World-'"

"What is this?"

"A name we give him in Lahore city. 'The Friend of all the World
takes leave to go to his own places. He will come back upon the
appointed day. Let the box and the bedding-roll be sent for; and if
there has been a fault, let the Hand of Friendship turn aside the Whip
of Calamity.' There is yet a little more, but-"

"No matter, read."

"'Certain things are not known to those who eat with forks. It is
better to eat with both hands for a while. Speak soft words to those
who do not understand this that the return may be propitious.' Now the
manner in which that was cast is of course the work of the
letter-writer, but see how wisely the boy has devised the matter of it
so that no hint is given except to those who know!"

"Is this the Hand of Friendship to avert the Whip of Calamity?"
laughed the Colonel.

"See how wise is the boy. He would go back to the Road again, as I
said. Not knowing yet thy trade- "

"I am not quite sure of that," the Colonel muttered.

"He turns to me to make a peace between you. Is he not wise? He says
he will return. He is but perfecting his knowledge. Think, Sahib! He
has been three months at the school. And he is not mouthed to that
bit. For my part, I rejoice: the pony learns the game."

"Ay, but another time he must not go alone."

"Why? He went alone before he came under the Colonel Sahib's
protection. When he comes to the Great Game he must go alone- alone,
and at peril of his head. Then, if he spits, or sneezes, or sits
down other than as the people do whom he watches, he may be slain. Why
hinder him now? Remember how the Persians say: The jackal that lives
in the wilds of Mazanderan can only be caught by the hounds of
Mazanderan."

"True. It is true, Mahbub Ali. And if he comes to no harm, I do
not desire anything better. But it is great insolence on his part."

"He does not tell me, even, whither he goes," said Mahbub. "He is no
fool. When his time is accomplished he will come to me. It is time the
healer of pearls took him in hand. He ripens too quickly- as Sahibs
reckon."

This prophecy was fulfilled to the letter a month later. Mahbub
had gone down to Umballa to bring up a fresh consignment of horses,
and Kim met him on the Kalka road at dusk riding alone, begged an alms
of him, was sworn at, and replied in English. There was nobody
within earshot to hear Mahbub's gasp of amazement.

"Oho! And where hast thou been?"

"Up and down- down and up."

"Come under a tree, out of the wet, and tell."

"I stayed for a while with an old man near Umballa; anon with a
household of my acquaintance in Umballa. With one of these I went as
far as Delhi to the southward. That is a wondrous city. Then I drove a
bullock for a teli (an oilman) coming north; but I heard of a great
feast forward in Puttiala, and thither went I in the company of a
firework-maker. It was a great feast" (Kim rubbed his stomach). "I saw
Rajahs, and elephants with gold and silver trappings; and they lit all
the fireworks at once, whereby eleven men were killed, my
firework-maker among them, and I was blown across a tent but took no
harm. Then I came back to the rel with a Sikh horseman, to whom I
was groom for my bread; and so here."

"Shabash!" said Mahbub Ali.

"But what does the Colonel Sahib say? I do not wish to be beaten."

"The Hand of Friendship has averted the Whip of Calamity; but
another time, when thou takest the Road it will be with me. This is
too early."

"Late enough for me. I have learned to read and to write English a
little at the madrissah. I shall soon be altogether a Sahib."

"Hear him!" laughed Mahbub, looking at the little drenched figure
dancing in the wet. "Salaam- Sahib," and he saluted ironically. "Well,
art tired of the Road, or wilt thou come on to Umballa with me and
work back with the horses?"

"I come with thee, Mahbub Ali."