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of his life in the great hills of Such-zen, 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 enduring 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 Srinagar 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

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