“I do not know anything. Go away!” said Kim, scenting evil. Hereupon the man caught him by the ear, dragged him to a room in a far-off wing where a dozen drummer-boys were sitting on forms, and told him to be still if he could do nothing else. This he managed very successfully. The man explained something or other with white lines on a black board for at least half an hour, and Kim continued his interrupted nap. He much disapproved of the present aspect of affairs, for this was the very school and discipline he had spent two-thirds of his young life in avoiding. Suddenly a beautiful idea occurred to him, and he wondered that he had not thought of it before. The man dismissed them, and first to spring through the veranda into the open sunshine was Kim. “’Ere, you! ’Alt! Stop!” said a high voice at his heels. “I’ve got to look after you. My orders are not to let you out of my sight. Where are you goin’?” It was the drummer-boy who had been hanging round him all the forenoon—a fat and freckled person of about fourteen, and Kim loathed him from the soles of his boots to his cap-ribbons. “To the bazar—to get sweets—for you,” said Kim, after thought. “Well, the bazar’s out o’ bounds. If we go there we’ll get a dressing-down. You come back.” “How near can we go?” Kim did not know what bounds meant, but he wished to be polite—for the present. “’Ow near? ’Ow far, you mean! We can go as far as that tree down the road.” “Then I will go there.” “All right. I ain’t goin’. It’s too ’ot. I can watch you from ’ere. It’s no good your runninv away. If you did, they’d spot you by your clothes. That’s regimental stuff you’re wearin’. There ain’t a picket in Umballa wouldn’t ’ead you back quicker than you started out.” This did not impress Kim as much as the knowledge that his raiment would tire him out if he tried to run. He slouched to the tree at the corner of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue he knew best. “And now, go to the nearest letter-writer in the bazar and tell him to come here. I would write a letter.” “But—but what manner of white man’s son art thou to need a bazar letter-writer? Is there not a schoolmaster in the barracks?” “Ay; and Hell is full of the same sort. Do my order, you—you Od! Thy mother was married under a basket! Servant of Lal Beg” (Kim knew the God of the sweepers), “run on my business or we will talk again.” The sweeper shuffled off in haste. “There is a white boy by the barracks waiting under a tree who is not a white boy,” he stammered to the first bazar letter-writer he came across. “He needs thee.”