Kim

near road.' A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the sentence.

Even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spelclass="underline"

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 are 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 greybeards.

'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 grey-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 fakirs 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 thine 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