the te-rain when we went down to Lucknow.'

'Be it so. Then I will tell thee more, Friend of all the World,
though in the telling I lend thee my head.'

'It was forfeit to me,' said Kim, with deep relish, 'in Umballa,
when thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat
me.'

'Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and
I. For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I chose to raise my
finger here.'

'And this is known to me also,' said Kim, readjusting the live
charcoal-ball on the weed. 'It is a very sure tie between us.
Indeed, thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy
beaten to death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside?
Most people here and in Simla and across the passes behind the
Hills would, on the other hand, say: "What has come to Mahbub Ali?"
if he were found dead among his horses. Surely, too, the Colonel
Sahib would make inquiries. But again,'- Kim's face puckered with
cunning, - 'he would not make overlong inquiry, lest people should
ask: "What has this Colonel Sahib to do with that horse-dealer?"
But I - if I lived -'

'As thou wouldst surely die -'

'Maybe; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that one
had come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's
bulkhead in the serai, and there had slain him, either before or