r Khan in all his
tents, must needs buy two of the worst, and that meant eight hours'
laborious diplomacy and untold tobacco. But it was all pure
delight--the wandering road, climbing, dipping, and sweeping about the
growing spurs; the flush of the morning laid along the distant snows;
the branched cacti, tier upon tier on the stony hillsides; the voices
of a thousand water-channels; the chatter of the monkeys; the solemn
deodars, climbing one after another with down-drooped branches; the
vista of the Plains rolled out far beneath them; the incessant twanging
of the tonga-horns and the wild rush of the led horses when a tonga
swung round a curve; the halts for prayers (Mahbub was very religious
in dry-washings and bellowings when time did not press); the evening
conferences by the halting-places, when camels and bullocks chewed
solemnly together and the stolid drivers told the news of the Road--all
these things lifted Kim's heart to song within him.

'But, when the singing and dancing is done,' said Mahbub Ali, 'comes
the Colonel Sahib's, and that is not so sweet.'

'A fair land--a most beautiful land is this of Hind--and the land of
the Five Rivers is fairer than all,' Kim half chanted. 'Into it I will
go again if Mahbub Ali or the Colonel lift hand or foot against me.
Once gone, who shall find me? Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of
Simla? Allah, what a city!'

'My father's brother, and he was an old man when Mackerson Sahib's well
was new at Peshawur, could recall when there were but two houses in it.'

He led the horses below the main road into the lower Simla bazar--the
crowded rabbit-warren that climbs up from the valley to the Town Hall
at an angle of forty-five. A man who knows his way there can defy all
the police of India's summer capital, so cunningly does veranda
communicate with veranda, alley-way with alley-way, and bolt-hole with
bolt-hole. Here live those who minister to the wants of the glad
city--jhampanis who pull the pretty ladies' 'rickshaws by night and
gamble till the dawn; grocers, oil-sellers, curio-vendors,
firewood-dealers, priests, pickpockets, and native employees of the
Government. Here are discussed by courtesans the things which are
supposed to be profoundest secrets of the India Council; and here
gather all the sub-sub-agents of half the Native States. Here, too,
Mahbub Ali rented a room, much more securely locked than his bulkhead
at Lahore, in the house of a Mohammedan cattl