The Man Who Would Be King

"Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy."

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to
follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances
which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I
have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship
with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion
of a Kingdom--army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But,
to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must
go and hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow
from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated
traveling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class,
but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in
the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which
is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or
Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not
patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots,
and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside
water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the
carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad,
when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom
of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond
like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of
things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into
which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for
a few days' food. "If India was filled with men like you and me, not
knowing more than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it
isn't seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying--it's seven
hundred millions," said he: and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was
disposed to agree with him. We talked politics--the politics of Loaferdom
that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not
smoothed off--and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted
to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the
turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward.
My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and
I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned.
Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I should resume touch
with the Treasury, there