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 fakir 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 af-fairs.' 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.'