ndness, sar,
otherwise--'

'I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that
young bonze when next we meet,' was the unchristian answer.

'Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!' Hurree crouched lower. The war was
breaking out afresh. 'Have you no consideration for our loss? The
baggage! The baggage!' He could hear the speaker literally dancing on
the grass. 'Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our
gains! Eight months' work! Do you know what that means? "Decidedly
it is we who can deal with Orientals!" Oh, you have done well.'

They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was with
the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight months of good diplomacy. There
was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted.
For the rest, Hurree could so stage-manage the journey through the
hills that Hilas, Bunar, and four hundred miles of hill-roads should
tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their own
coolies are little respected in the Hills, and the hillman has a very
keen sense of humour.

'If I had done it myself,' thought Hurree, 'it would not have been
better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of course I arranged it
myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran downhill I thought it!
Thee outrage was accidental, but onlee me could have worked it--ah--for
all it was dam'-well worth. Consider the moral effect upon these
ignorant peoples! No treaties--no papers--no written documents at
all--and me to interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel!
I wish I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in
space simultaneously. Thatt is axiomatic.'

Chapter 14

My brother kneels (so saith Kabir)
To stone and brass in heathen wise,
But in my brother's voice I hear
My own unanswered agonies.
His God is as his Fates assign--
His prayer is all the world's--and mine.

The Prayer.

At moonrise the cautious coolies got under way. The lama, refreshed by
his sleep and the spirit, needed no more than Kim's shoulder to bear
him along--a silent, swift-striding man. They held the shale-sprinkled
grass for an hour, swept round the shoulder of an immortal cliff, and
climbed into a new country entirely blocked off from all sight of Chini
valley. A huge pasture-ground ran up fan-shaped to the living snow.
At its base was perhaps half an acre of flat land, on which stood a few
soil and timber huts. Be