'Eh?' said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.

'My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news
bear witness, we brought the news, and now we go.' Kim half-crooked
his hand at his side.

The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling
something about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and
would feed them well for days. The lama, seeing the flash of the
metal, droned a blessing.

'Go thy way, Friend of all the World,' piped the old soldier,
wheeling his scrawny mount. 'For once in all my days I have met a
true prophet - who was not in the Army.'

Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect
as the younger.

A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the
road. He had seen the money pass.

'Halt!' he cried in impressive English. 'Know ye not that there is
a takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who
enter the Road from this side-road? It is the order of the Sirkar,
and the money is spent for the planting of trees and the
beautification of the ways.'

'And the bellies of the police,' said Kim, slipping out of arm's
reach. 'Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we
came from the nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law? Hast