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.