Kim looked his astonishment; but from the edge of the sheep-pasture floated a shrill, kite-like trill. A child tending cattle had picked it up from a brother or sister on the far side of the slope that commanded Chini valley.

‘My husbands are also out there gathering wood.’ She drew a handful of walnuts from her bosom, split one neatly, and began to eat. Kim affected blank ignorance.

‘Dost thou not know the meaning of the walnut — priest?’ she said coyly, and handed him the half- shells.

‘Well thought of.’ He slipped the piece of paper between them quickly. ‘Hast thou a little wax to close them on this letter?’

The woman sighed aloud, and Kim relented.

‘There is no payment till service has been rendered. Carry this to the Babu, and say it was sent by the Son of the Charm.’

‘Ai! Truly! Truly! By a magician — who is like a Sahib.’

‘Nay, a Son of the Charm: and ask if there be any answer.’

‘But if he offer a rudeness? I — I am afraid.’

Kim laughed. ‘He is, I have no doubt, very tired and very hungry. The Hills make cold bed-fellows. Hai, my’ — it was on the tip of his tongue to say Mother, but he turned it to Sister —‘thou art a wise and witty woman. By this time all the villages know what has befallen the Sahibs — eh?’

‘True. News was at Ziglaur by midnight, and by tomorrow should be at Kotgarh. The villages are both afraid and angry.’

‘No need. Tell the villages to feed the Sahibs and pass them on, in peace. We must get them quietly away from our valleys. To steal is one thing — to kill another. The Babu will understand, and there will be no after-complaints. Be swift. I must tend my master when he wakes.’

‘So be it. After service — thou hast said? — comes the reward. I am the Woman of Shamlegh, and I hold from the Rajah. I am no common bearer of babes. Shamlegh is thine: hoof and horn and hide, milk and butter. Take or leave.’

She turned resolutely uphill, her silver necklaces clicking on her broad breast, to meet the morning sun fifteen hundred feet above them. This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin edges of the packets.

‘How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is so-always pestered by women? There was that girl at Akrola of the Ford; and there was the scullion’s wife behind the dovecot — not counting the others — and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts, indeed! Ho! ho! It is almonds in the Plains!’

He went out to levy on the village — not with a begging-bowl, which might do for down-country, but in the manner of a prince. Shamlegh’s summer population is only three families — four women and eight or nine men. They were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks, from ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they had taken their full share in the overnight loot. The neat Continental tents had been cut up and shared long ago, and there were patent aluminium saucepans abroad.

But they considered the lama’s presence a perfect safeguard against all consequences, and impenitently brought Kim of their best — even to a drink of chang — the barley-beer that comes from Ladakh-way.