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how the Devil played with the boys and repented of it and walked
idly across country.

The lama strode after him. All that day, whenever they passed a
stream, he had turned aside to look at it, but in no case had he
received any warning that he had found his River. Insensibly, too,
the comfort of speaking to someone in a reasonable tongue, and of
being properly considered and respected as her spiritual adviser by
a well-born woman, had weaned his thoughts a little from the
Search. And further, he was prepared to spend serene years in his
quest; having nothing of the white man's impatience, but a great
faith.

'Where goest thou?' he called after Kim.

'Nowhither - it was a small march, and all this' - Kim waved his
hands abroad - 'is new to me.'

'She is beyond question a wise and a discerning woman. But it is
hard to meditate when -'

'All women are thus.' Kim spoke as might have Solomon.

'Before the lamassery was a broad platform,' the lama muttered,
looping up the well-worn rosary, 'of stone. On that I have left the
marks of my feet - pacing to and fro with these.'

He clicked the beads, and began the 'Om mane pudme hum's of his
devotion; grateful for the cool, the quiet, and the absence of
dust.

One thing after another drew Kim's idle eye across the plain. There
was no purpose in his wanderings, except that the build of the huts
near by seemed new, and he wished to investigate.

They came out on a broad tract of grazing-ground, brown and purple
in the afternoon light, with a heavy clump of mangoes in the
centre. It struck Kim as curious that no shrine stood in so
eligible a spot: the boy was observing as any priest for these
things. Far across the plain walked side by side four men, made
small by the distance. He looked intently under his curved palms
and caught the sheen of brass.

'Soldiers. White soldiers!' said he. 'Let us see.'

'It is always soldiers when thou and I go out alone together. But I
have never seen the white soldiers.'

'They do no harm except when they are drunk. Keep behind this
tree.'

They stepped behind the thick trunks in the cool dark of the mango-
tope. Two little figures halted; the other two came forward
uncertainly. They were the advance-party of a regiment on the
march, sent out, as usual, to mark the camp. They bore five-foot
sticks with fluttering flags, and called to each other as they
spread over the flat earth.

At last they entered the mango-grove, walking heavily.

'It's here or hereabouts - officers' tents under the trees, I take
it, an' the rest of us can stay outside. Have they marked out for
the baggage-wagons behind?'

They cried again to their comrades in the distance, and the rough
answer came back faint and mellowed.

'Shove the flag in here, then,' said one.

'What do they prepare?' said the lama, wonderstruck. 'This is a
great and terrible world. What is the device on the flag?'

A soldier thrust a stave within a few feet of them, grunted

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