"Oh ye
         who tread the Narrow Way
    By Tophet-flare to Judgement Day,
    Be gentle
         when the heathen
              pray To Buddha at Kamakura!"

    He sat,
           in defiance of municipal orders,
         astride the gun Zam-Zammah
               on her brick platform
             opposite the old Ajaib-Gher-
                   the Wonder House,
           as the natives
              call the Lahore Museum.

    Who hold Zam-Zammah,
           that
         "fire-breathing dragon,"
            hold the Punjab,
         for the great green-bronze piece
            is always first
                   of the conqueror's loot.

    There was some justification
           for Kim-
         he had
              kicked Lala Dinanath's boy
                   off the trunnions-
         since the English
             held the Punjab and Kim
            was English.

    Though he
        was burned black
               as any native;
        though he spoke
               the vernacular by preference,
           and his mother-tongue
               in a clipped uncertain sing-song;
        though he
            consorted on terms
                   of perfect equality
                 with the small boys
                       of the bazar;
        Kim was white-
               a poor white
             of the very poorest.

    The half-caste woman
         who looked after him
           (she smoked opium,
           and pretended
              to keep
                   a second-hand furniture shop
                 by the square
             where the cheap cabs wait)
          told the missionaries
             that she
                was Kim's mother's sister;
            but his mother
                had been nursemaid
                       in a colonels family
                    and had married Kimball O'Hara,
               a young colour-sergeant the Mavericks,
             an Irish regiment.

    He afterwards
        took a post
               on the Sind,
           Punjab,
         and Delhi railway,
           and his regiment went
             home without him.

    The wife
        died of cholera in Ferozepore,
           and O'Hara
            fell to drink and loafing
                   up and
                 down the line
                       with the keen-eyed three-year-old baby.

    Societies and chaplains,
           anxious for the child,
         tried to catch him,
           but O'Hara drifted away,
         till he
            came across the woman
             who took opium and
                  learned the taste from her,
           and died as poor whites
              die in India.

    His estate at death
          consisted of three papers- one
         he called his
           "ne varietur"
            because those words
            were written
                   below his signature thereon,
           and another
               his "clearance-certificate."

    The third was Kim's birth-certificate.

    Those things,
           he was used to say,
         in his glorious opium-hours,
        would yet make little
               Kimball a man.

    On no account
        was Kim
              to part with them,
           for they
            belonged to a great piece
                   of magic-
                 such magic
                   as men
                  practised over yonder
                       behind the Museum,
         in the big blue
               and white Jadoo-Gher-
                   the Magic House,
           as we name
               the Masonic Lodge.

    It would,
           he said,
         all come right some day,
           and Kim's horn
            would be exalted
                   between pillars- montrous pillars-
                       of beauty and strength.

    The Colonel himself,
           riding on a horse,
         at the head
               of the finest regiment
             in the world,
           would attend
               to Kim- little Kim
          that should have
             been better off
                   than his father.

    Nine hundred first-class devils,
           whose god
            was a Red Bull
                   on a green field,
         would attend to Kim,
           if they
            had not
                  forgotten O'Hara- poor O'Hara
             that was gangforeman
                   on the Ferozepore line.

    Then he
        would weep bitterly
               in the broken
             rush chair on the veranda.

    So it
        came about after his death
         that the woman sewed parchment,
           paper,
         and birth-certificate
               into a leather amulet-case which
             she strung round Kim's neck.

    "And some day,"
          she said,
            confusedly remembering O'Hara's
                         prophecies,
             "there will come
                   for you
                       a great Red Bull
                   on a green field,
               and the Colonel
                  riding on his tall horse,
             yes,
               and"- dropping
                   into English- "nine hundred devils."
    "Ah,"
          said Kim,
               "I shall remember.

    A Red Bull
           and a Colonel
         on a horse
        will come,
           but first,