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An orphaned street-urchin follows a holy man across India during the time of the British Raj, eventually gaining an education and becoming a recruit to the Great Game of espionage against the Russians.

Page 153 of 385
Table of Contents

VII

because he was going to a superior school did he complain, but awaited the play of circumstances with an interested soul. Father Victor, good man, took him to the station, put him into an empty second-class next to Colonel Creighton’s first, and bade him farewell with genuine feeling.

“They’ll make a man o’ you, O’Hara, at St. Xavier’s⁠—a white man, an’, I hope, a good man. They know all about your comin’, an’ the Colonel will see that ye’re not lost or mislaid anywhere on the road. I’ve given you a notion of religious matters⁠—at least I hope so⁠—and you’ll remember, when they ask you your religion, that you’re a Cath’lic. Better say Roman Cath’lic, though I’m not fond of the word.”

Kim lit a rank cigarette⁠—he had been careful to buy a stock in the bazaar⁠—and lay down to think. This solitary passage was very different from that joyful down-journey in the third-class with the lama. “Sahibs get little pleasure of travel,” he reflected. “ Hai mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball. It is my Kismet. No man can escape his Kismet. But I am

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