'Can buts eat?' said Kim, with a twinkle. 'For I am hungry.'

'It is no jest,' cried the lama. 'A certain astrologer of that city
whose name I have forgotten -'

'That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last
night,' Kim whispered to the priest.

'Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my
chela should find his desire within two days. But what said he of
the meaning of the stars, Friend of all the World?'

Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village
greybeards.

'The meaning of my Star is War,' he replied pompously.

Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the
brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have
lain down, Kim's white blood set him upon his feet.

'Ay, War,' he answered.

'That is a sure prophecy,' rumbled a deep voice. 'For there is
always war along the Border - as I know.'

It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the
days of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry
regiment. The Government had given him a good holding in the