INDIAN TALES BY RUDYARD KIPLING CONTENTS "The Finest Story in the World" With the Main Guard Wee Willie Winkie The Rout of the White Hussars At Twenty-two The Courting of Dinah Shadd The Story of Muhammad Din In Flood Time My Own True Ghost Story The Big Drunk Draf' By Word of Mouth The Drums of the Fore and Aft The Sending of Dana Da On the City Wall The Broken-link Handicap On Greenhow Hill To Be Filed for Reference The Man Who Would Be King The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney His Majesty the King The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes In the House of Suddhoo Black Jack The Taking of Lungtungpen The Phantom Rickshaw On the Strength of a Likeness Private Learoyd's Story Wressley of the Foreign Office The Solid Muldoon The Three Musketeers Beyond the Pale The God from the Machine The Daughter of the Regiment The Madness of Private Ortheris L'Envoi "THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD" "Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave," --_W.E. Henley_. His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from aspirations. I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his given name, and he called the marker "Bullseyes." Charlie explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother.