estate at death consisted of three papers - one he called his 'ne
varietur' because those words were written below his signature
thereon, and another his 'clearance-certificate'. The third was
Kim's birth-certificate. Those things, he was used to say, in his
glorious opium-hours, would yet make little Kimball a man. On no
account was Kim to part with them, for they belonged to a great
piece of magic - such magic as men practised over yonder behind
the Museum, in the big blue-and-white Jadoo-Gher - the Magic
House, as we name the Masonic Lodge. It would, he said, all come
right some day, and Kim's horn would be exalted between pillars -
monstrous pillars - of beauty and strength. The Colonel himself,
riding on a horse, at the head of the finest Regiment in the
world, would attend to Kim - little Kim that should have been
better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils,
whose God was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim,
if they had not forgotten O'Hara - poor O'Hara that was gang-
foreman on the Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in
the broken rush chair on the veranda. So it came about after his
death that the woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-
certificate into a leather amulet-case which she strung round
Kim's neck.

'And some day,' she said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's
prophecies, 'there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green
field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'
dropping into English - 'nine hundred devils.'

'Ah,' said Kim, 'I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a
horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men
making ready the ground for these matters. That is how my father