But thou didst put a spell on the Mahratta with prideful workings--I watched thee--and with sidelong glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer: whence calamity and suspicion.' Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years.

Not more than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he saw himself in a cleft stick.

The train rolled out of Delhi into the night.
'It is true,' he murmured.

'Where I have offended thee I have done wrong.' 'It is more, chela.

Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell how far.' This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at Simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to--abstract.
Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart of Delhi city.