boys kicked him because he was going to a superior school did he
complain, but awaited the play of circumstances with an interested
soul. Father Victor, good man, took him to the station, put him
into an empty second-class next to Colonel Creighton's first, and
bade him farewell with genuine feeling.

'They'll make a man o' you, O'Hara, at St Xavier's - a white man,
an', I hope, a good man. They know all about your comin', an' the
Colonel will see that ye're not lost or mislaid anywhere on the
road. I've given you a notion of religious matters, - at least I
hope so, - and you'll remember, when they ask you your religion,
that you're a Cath'lic. Better say Roman Cath'lic, tho' I'm not
fond of the word.'

Kim lit a rank cigarette - he had been careful to buy a stock in
the bazar - and lay down to think. This solitary passage was very
different from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the
lama. 'Sahibs get little pleasure of travel,' he reflected.

'Hai mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball.
It is my Kismet. No man can escape his Kismet. But I am to pray to
Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib.' He looked at his boots ruefully.
'No; I am Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is
Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done
before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all
this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what
fate.

Presently the Colonel sent for him, and talked for a long time. So
far as Kim could gather, he was to be diligent and enter the Survey