`When I go back to the madrissah I must return it. They do not allow little guns. Thou wilt keep it for me?'

`Son, I am wearied of that madrissah, where they take the best years of a man to teach him what he can only learn upon the Road. The folly of the Sahibs has neither top nor bottom. No matter. Maybe thy written report shall save thee further bondage; and God He knows we need men more and more in the Game.'

They marched, jaw-bound against blowing sand, across the salt desert to Jodhpur, where Mahbub and his handsome nephew Habib Ullah did much trading; and then sorrowfully, in European clothes, which he was fast outgrowing, Kim went second-class to St Xavier's. Three weeks later, Colonel Creighton, pricing Tibetan ghost-daggers at Lurgan's shop, faced Mahbub Ali openly mutinous. Lurgan Sahib operated as support in reserve.

`The pony is made - finished - mouthed and paced, Sahib! From now on, day by day, he will lose his manners if he is kept at tricks. Drop the rein on his back and let go,' said the horse-dealer. `We need him.'

`But he is so young, Mahbub - not more than sixteen - is he?'

`When I was fifteen, I had shot my man and begot my man, Sahib.'

`You impenitent old heathen!' Creighton turned to Lurgan. The black beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the Afghan's dyed scarlet.

`I should have used him long ago,' said Lurgan. `The younger the better. That is why I always have my really valuable jewels watched by a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is the only boy I could not make to see things.'

`In the crystal - in the ink-pool?' demanded Mahbub.

`No. Under my hand, as I told you. That has never happened before. It means that he is strong enough - but you think it skittles, Colonel Creighton - to make anyone do anything he wants. And that is three years ago. I have taught him a good deal since, Colonel Creighton. I think you waste him now.'

`Hmm! Maybe you're right. But, as you know, there is no Survey work for him at present.'

`Let him out - let him go,' Mahbub interrupted. `Who expects any colt to carry heavy weight at first? Let him run with the caravans - like our white camel-colts - for luck. I would take him myself; but - '

`There is a little business where he would be most useful - in the South,' said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy blued eyelids.

`E23 has that in hand,' said Creighton quickly. `He must not go down there. Besides, he knows no Turki.'

`Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he will bring them back,' Lurgan insisted.

`No. That is a man's job,' said Creighton.

It was a wry-necked matter of unauthorized and incendiary correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to book for kidnapping women within British territory. The Moslem Archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no need he should continue a correspondence which might some day compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an Arab trader, as E23, taking up the work, duly reported.