Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must raise on every occasion.  It died down, and Kim lay out behind the little knot of Mahbub’s followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering.  Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy.  Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St Xavier’s all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multiplication-table in English.

‘I am very old,’ he thought sleepily.  ’Every month I become a year more old.  I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub’s message to Umballa.  Even when I was with that white Regiment I was very young and small and had no wisdom.  But now I learn every day, and in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses’ pedigrees, or maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with him.  Yes; that is best.  To walk again as a chela with my lama when he comes back to Benares.’

The thoughts came more slowly and disconnectedly.  He was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble round the fire.  It came from behind the iron-skinned horse-truck.

‘He is not here, then?’

’Where should he be but roystering in the city.  Who looks for a rat in a frog-pond?  Come away.  He is not our man.’

’He must not go back beyond the Passes a second time.  It is the order.’

’Hire some woman to drug him.  It is a few rupees only, and there is no evidence.’

’Except the woman.  It must be more certain; and remember the price upon his head.’

’Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border.  If it were in Peshawur, now!’

‘Yes — in Peshawur,’ the second voice sneered.  ’Peshawur, full of his blood-kin — full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will hide.  Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well.’

‘Then what is the plan?’

’O fool, have I not told it a hundred times?  Wait till he comes to lie down, and then one sure shot.  The trucks are between us and pursuit.  We have but to run back over the lines and go our way.  They will not see whence the shot came.  Wait here at least till the dawn.  What manner of fakir art thou, to shiver at a little watching?’