The sweeper shuffled off in haste. `There is a white boy by the barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,' he stammered to the first bazar letter-writer he came across. `He needs thee.'

`Will he pay?' said the spruce scribe, gathering up his desk and pens and sealing-wax all in order.

`I do not know. He is not like other boys. Go and see. It is well worth.'

Kim danced with impatience when the slim young Kayeth hove in sight. As soon as his voice could carry he cursed him volubly.

`First I will take my pay,' the letter-writer said. `Bad words have made the price higher. But who art thou, dressed in that fashion, to speak in this fashion?'

`Aha! That is in the letter which thou shalt write. Never was such a tale. But I am in no haste. Another writer will serve me. Umballa city is as full of them as is Lahore.'

`Four annas,' said the writer, sitting down and spreading his cloth in the shade of a deserted barrack- wing.

Mechanically Kim squatted beside him - squatted as only the natives can - in spite of the abominable clinging trousers.

The writer regarded him sideways.

`That is the price to ask of Sahibs,' said Kim. `Now fix me a true one.'

`An anna and a half. How do I know, having written the letter, that thou wilt not run away?'

`I must not go beyond this tree, and there is also the stamp to be considered.'

`I get no commission on the price of the stamp. Once more, what manner of white boy art thou?'

`That shall be said in the letter, which is to Mahbub Ali, the horse-dealer in the Kashmir Serai, at Lahore. He is my friend.'

`Wonder on wonder!' murmured the letter-writer, dipping a reed in the inkstand. `To be written in Hindi?'

`Assuredly. To Mahbub Ali then. Begin! `I have come down with the old man as far as Umballa in the train. At Umballa I carried the news of the bay mare's pedigree.'' After what he had seen in the garden, he was not going to write of white stallions.

`Slower a little. What has a bay mare to do... Is it Mahbub Ali, the great dealer?'

`Who else? I have been in his service. Take more ink. Again. `As the order was, so I did it. We then went on foot towards Benares, but on the third day we found a certain regiment.' Is that down?'

`Ay, pulton,' murmured the writer, all ears.

``I went into their camp and was caught, and by means of the charm about my neck, which thou knowest, it was established that I was the son of some man in the regiment: according to the prophecy of the Red Bull, which thou knowest was common talk of our bazar.'' Kim waited for this shaft to sink into the letter- writer's heart, cleared his throat, and continued: ``A priest clothed me and gave me a new name... One priest, however, was a fool. The clothes are very heavy, but I am a Sahib and my heart is heavy too. They send me to a school and beat me. I do not like the air and water here. Come then and help me, Mahbub Ali, or send me some money, for I have not sufficient to pay the writer who writes this.''