``Who writes this.' It is my own fault that I was tricked. Thou art as clever as Husain Bux that forged the Treasury stamps at Nucklao. But what a tale! What a tale! Is it true by any chance?'

`It does not profit to tell lies to Mahbub Ali. It is better to help his friends by lending them a stamp. When the money comes I will repay.'

The writer grunted doubtfully, but took a stamp out of his desk, sealed the letter, handed it over to Kim, and departed. Mahbub Ali's was a name of power in Umballa.

`That is the way to win a good account with the Gods,' Kim shouted after him.

`Pay me twice over when the money comes,' the man cried over his shoulder.

`What was you bukkin' to that nigger about?' said the drummer-boy when Kim returned to the veranda. `I was watchin' you.'

`I was only talkin' to him.'

`You talk the same as a nigger, don't you?'

`No-ah! No-ah! I onlee speak a little. What shall we do now?'

`The bugles'll go for dinner in arf a minute. My Gawd! I wish I'd gone up to the Front with the Regiment. It's awful doin' nothin' but school down `ere. Don't you `ate it?'

`Oah yess!'

`I'd run away if I knew where to go to, but, as the men say, in this bloomin' Injia you're only a prisoner at large. You can't desert without bein' took back at once. I'm fair sick of it.'

`You have been in Be - England?'

`W'y, I only come out last troopin' season with my mother. I should think I 'ave been in England. What a ignorant little beggar you are! You was brought up in the gutter, wasn't you?'

`Oah yess. Tell me something about England. My father he came from there.'

Though he would not say so, Kim of course disbelieved every word the drummer-boy spoke about the Liverpool suburb which was his England. It passed the heavy time till dinner - a most unappetizing meal served to the boys and a few invalids in a corner of a barrack-room. But that he had written to Mahbub Ali, Kim would have been almost depressed. The indifference of native crowds he was used to; but this strong loneliness among white men preyed on him. He was grateful when, in the course of the afternoon, a big soldier took him over to Father Victor, who lived in another wing across another dusty parade- ground. The priest was reading an English letter written in purple ink. He looked at Kim more curiously than ever.

`An' how do you like it, my son, as far as you've gone? Not much, eh? It must be hard - very hard on a wild animal. Listen now. I've an amazin' epistle from your friend.'

`Where is he? Is he well? Oah! If he knows to write me letters, it is all right.'

`You're fond of him then?'

`Of course I am fond of him. He was fond of me.'

`It seems so by the look of this. He can't write English, can he?'