No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write “F R S” after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work—papers representing a life of it—took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soiree in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree Babu, moved by like desire. He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub. “How soon can we get the colt from the stable?” said the horse-dealer, reading his eyes. “Hmm! If I withdraw him by order now—what will he do, think you? I have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.” “He will come to me,” said Mahbub promptly. “Lurgan Sahib and I will prepare him for the Road.” “So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice. But who will be his sponsor?” Lurgan slightly inclined his head. “He will not tell anything, if that is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.” “It’s only a boy, after all.” “Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a little.” “Will he draw pay?” demanded the practical horse-dealer. “Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.” One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying audit. That Service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds are administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or present itemized accounts. Mahbub’s eyes lighted with almost a Sikh’s love of money. Even Lurgan’s impassive face changed. He considered the years to come when Kim would have been entered and made to the Great Game that never ceases day and night, throughout India. He foresaw honour and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming to him from his pupil. Lurgan Sahib had made E.23 what E.23 was, out of a bewildered, impertinent, lying, little North-West Province man. But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of Kim when St Xavier’s Head called him aside, with word that Colonel Creighton had sent for him.