ts 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 bedfellows. 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 tin