"'He said he was a handsome child and patted him on the head; wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had come, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him--the Heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born. . . . Be it remembered that the Sahib's shirts are correctly enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his wash-basin. My child was bewitched and I slew the wizard.'" There is here just that blend of simplicity and incalculable darkness found in all Mr Kipling's native tales. If the premises of life in India are tortuous, conduct and reasoning are as naively innocent as a problem in geometry. It follows that, when the devils are out of the story, no story breathes more delightfully of Eden than a story of the East. The white side of the black story of Imray Sahib is shown in _Kim_, and in all the hints and small studies for _Kim_ that preceded Mr Kipling's best of all Indian tales. But _Kim_ is something of a paradox. It is the best of all Indian tales by virtue of qualities which have little to do with India. It is an Indian book only upon its least important side. It is true that Kim himself is upon one side the most cunning of Mr Kipling's studies of the meeting of East and West; but that, for us, is not his final merit. It is the final merit of Kim to be first cousin of Mowgli, the child of the Jungle. His first claim to our delight in him is that he is the quickest of young creatures, his senses sharp and clean, of a conscience untroubled, of a spirit that rejoices in nimble work, of a will in which loyalty and courage and the peace of self-confidence are firmly rooted. In a word, he is Mowgli among men.