e 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 therailway 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 grey 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