Kim / Kipling, Rudyard

                                      1901

                                      KIM

                               by Rudyard Kipling

                                  1

                  "Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way

                   By Tophet-flare to Judgement Day,

                   Be gentle when the heathen pray

                     To Buddha at Kamakura!"

  He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun
Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher- the
Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold
Zam-Zammah, that "fire-breathing dragon," hold the Punjab, for the
great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot.

  There was some justification for Kim- he had kicked Lala
Dinanath's boy off the trunnions- since the English held the Punjab
and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any native;
though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in
a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect
equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white- a poor white
of the very poorest. The half-caste woman who looked after him (she
smoked opium, and pretended to keep a second-hand furniture shop by
the square where the cheap cabs wait) told the missionaries that she
was Kim's mother's sister; but his mother had been nursemaid in a
colonels family and had married Kimball O'Hara, a young
colour-sergeant the Mavericks, an Irish regiment. He afterwards took a
post on the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi railway, and his regiment went
home without him. The wife died of cholera in Ferozepore, and O'Hara
fell to drink and loafing up and down the line with the keen-eyed
three-year-old baby. Societies and chaplains, anxious for the child,
tried to catch him, but O'Hara drifted away, till he came across the
woman who took opium and learned the taste from her, and died as
poor whites die in India. His estate at death consisted of three
papers- one he called his "ne varietur" because those words were
written below his signature thereon, and another his
"clearance-certificate." The third was Kim's birth-certificate.
Those things, he was used to say, in his glorious opium-hours, would
yet make little Kimball a man. On no account was Kim to part with
them, for they belonged to a great piece of magic- such magic as men
practised over yonder behind the Museum, in the big blue and white
Jadoo-Gher- the Magic House, as we name the Masonic Lodge. It would,
he said, all come right some day, and Kim's horn would be exalted
between pillars- montrous pillars- of beauty and strength. The Colonel
himself, riding on a horse, at the head of the finest regiment in
the world, would attend to Kim- little Kim that should have been
better off than his father. Nine hundred first-class devils, whose god
was a Red Bull on a green field, would attend to Kim, if they had
not forgotten O'Hara- poor O'Hara that was gangforeman on the
Ferozepore line. Then he would weep bitterly in the broken rush
chair on the veranda. So it came about after his death that the
woman sewed parchment, paper, and birth-certificate into a leather
amulet-case which she strung round Kim's neck.

  "And some day," she said, confusedly remembering O'Hara's
prophecies, "there will come for you a great Red Bull on a green
field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and"- dropping
into English- "nine hundred devils."

  "Ah," said Kim, "I shall remember. A Red Bull and a Colonel on a
horse will come, but first, my father said, will come the two men
making ready the ground for these matters. That is how, my father
said, they always did; and it is always so when men work magic."

  If the woman had sent Kim up to the local Jadoo-Gher with those
papers, he would, of course, have been taken over by the Provincial
Lodge and sent to the Masonic Orphanage in the Hills; but what she had
heard of magic she distrusted. Kim, too, held views of his own. As
he reached the years of indiscretion, he learned to avoid missionaries
and white men of serious aspect who asked who he was, and what he did.
For Kim did nothing with an immense success. True, he knew the
wonderful walled city of Lahore from the Delhi Gate to the outer
Fort Ditch; was hand in glove with men who led lives stranger than
anything Haroun al Raschid dreamed of; and he lived in a life wild
as that of the Arabian Nights, but missionaries and secretaries of
charitable societies could not see the beauty of it. His nickname
through the wards was "Little Friend of all the World"; and very
often, being lithe and inconspicuous, he executed commissions by night
on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion.
It was intrigue, of course- he knew that much, as he had known all
evil since he could speak- but what he loved was the game for its
own sake- the stealthy prowl through the dark gullies and lanes, the
crawl up a water-pipe, the sights and sounds of the women's world on
the flat roofs, and the headlong flight from housetop to housetop
under cover of the hot dark. Then there were holy men, ash-smeared
faquirs by their brick shrines under the trees at the riverside,
with whom he was quite familiar- greeting them as they returned from
begging-tours, and, when no one was by, eating from the same dish. The
woman who looked after him insisted with tears that he should wear
European clothes- trousers, a shirt, and a battered hat. Kim found
it easier to slip into Hindu or Mohammedan garb when engaged on
certain businesses. One of the young men of fashion- he who was
found dead at the bottom of a well on the night of the earthquake- had
once given him a complete suit of Hindu kit, the costume of a
low-caste street boy, and Kim stored it in a secret place under some
baulks in Nila Ram's timber-yard, beyond the Punjab High Court,
where the fragrant deodar logs lie seasoning after they have driven
down the Ravee. When there was business or frolic afoot, Kim would use
his properties, returning at dawn to the veranda, all tired out from
shouting at the heels of a marriage procession, or yelling at a
Hindu festival. Sometimes there was food in the house, more often
there was not, and then Kim went out again to eat with his native
friends.

  As he drummed his heels against Zam-Zammah he turned now and again
from his king-of-the-castle game with little Chota Lal, and
Abdullah, the sweetmeat-seller's son, to make a rude remark to the
native policeman on guard over rows of shoes at the Museum door. The
big Punjabi grinned tolerantly: he knew Kim of old. So did the
water-carrier, sluicing water on the dry road from his goat-skin
bag. So did Jawahir Singh, the Museum carpenter, bent over new
packing-cases. So did everybody in sight except the peasants from
the country, hurrying up to the Wonder House to view the things that
men made in their own Province and elsewhere. The Museum was given
up to Indian arts and manufactures, and anybody who sought wisdom
could ask the curator to explain.

  "Off! Off! Let me up!" cried Abdullah, climbing up Zam-Zammah's
wheel.

  "Thy father was a pastry-cook, Thy mother stole the ghi," sang
Kim. "All Mussalmans fell off Zam-Zammah long ago!"

  "Let me up!" shrilled little Chota Lal in his gilt-embroidered
cap. His father was worth perhaps half a million sterling, but India
is the only democratic land in the world.

  "The Hindus fell off Zam-Zammah too. The Mussalmans pushed them off.
Thy father was a pastry-cook- "

  He stopped; for there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring
Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had
never seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold
of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim
refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long
open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On
his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter. His face was yellow
and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the
bazar. His eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little
slits of onyx.

  "Who is that?" said Kim to his companions.

  "Perhaps it is a man," said Abdullah, finger in mouth, staring.

  "Without doubt," returned Kim; "but he is no man of India that I
have ever seen."

  "A priest, perhaps," said Chota Lal, spying the rosary. "See! He
goes into the Wonder House!"

  "Nay, nay," said the policeman, shaking his head. "I do not
understand your talk." The constable spoke Punjabi. "Oh, Friend of all
the World, what does he say?"

  "Send him hither," said Kim, dropping from Zam-Zammah, flourishing
his bare heels. "He is a foreigner, and thou art a buffalo."

  The man turned helplessly and drifted towards the boys. He was
old, and his woollen gaberdine still reeked of the stinking
artemisia of the mountain passes.

  "O Children, what is that big house?" he said in very fair Urdu.

  "The Ajaib-Gher, the Wonder House!" Kim gave him no title- such as
Lala or Mian. He could not divine the man's creed.

  "Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?"

  "It is written above the door- all can enter."

  "Without payment?"

  "I go in and out. I am no banker," laughed Kim.

  "Alas! I am an old man. I did not know." Then, fingering his rosary,
he half turned to the Museum.

  "What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?" Kim
asked.

  "I came by Kulu- from beyond the Kailas- but what know you? From the
hills where" he sighed- "the air and water are fresh and cool."

  "Aha! Khitai" (Chinaman), said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had once
chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above the boots.

  "Pahari?" (a hillman), said little Chota Lal.

  "Ay, child- a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear of
Bhotiyal (Tibet)? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya (Tibetan), since you
must know- a lama- or, say a guru in your tongue."

  "A guru from Tibet," said Kim. "I have not seen such a man. They
be Hindus in Tibet, then?"

  "We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our
lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die. Now do
you, who are children, know as much as I do who am old?" He smiled
benignantly on the boys.

  "Hast thou eaten?"

  He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn wooden begging-bowl.
The boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.

  "I do not wish to eat yet." He turned his head like an old
tortoise in the sunlight. "Is it true that there are many images in
the Wonder House of Lahore?" He repeated the last words as one
making sure of an address.

  "That is true," said Abdullah. "It is full of heathen buts. Thou
also art an idolater."

  "Never mind him," said Kim. "That is the Government's house and
there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard.
Come with me and I will show."

  "Strange priests eat boys," whispered Chota Lal.

  "And he is a stranger and a but-parast" (idolater), said Abdullah,
the Mohammedan.

  Kim laughed. "He is new. Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe.
Come!"

  Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man
followed and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger
figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long
since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and not
unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch. There
were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief, fragments of
statues and slabs crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick
walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of the North Country and now,
dug up and labelled, made the pride of the Museum. In open-mouthed
wonder the lama turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt
attention before a large alto-relief representing a coronation or
apotheosis of the Lord Buddha. The Master was represented seated on
a lotus the petals of which were so deeply undercut as to show
almost detached. Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings,
elders, and old-time Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with
fishes and water-birds. Two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath
over His head; above them another pair supported an umbrella
surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

  "The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself," the lama half
sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist invocation:

  "To Him the Way- the Law- Apart-

  Whom Maya held beneath her heart

  Ananda's Lord- the Bodhisat.

  "And He is Here! The Most Excellent Law is here also! My
pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!"

  "Yonder is the Sahib," said Kim, and dodged sideways among the cases
of the arts and manufacture wing. A white-bearded Englishman was
looking at the lama, who gravely turned and saluted him and after some
fumbling drew forth a note-book and a scrap of paper.

  "Yes, that is my name," smiling at the clumsy, childish print.

  "One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places- he is now
Abbot of the Lung-Cho Monastery- gave it me, stammered the lama. "He
spoke of these." His lean hand moved tremulously round.

  "Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am
here"- he glanced at the lama's face- "to gather knowledge. Come to my
office awhile." The old man was trembling with excitement.

  The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from
the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear against
a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his instinct,
stretched out to listen and watch.

  Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama,
haltingly at first, spoke to the curator of his own lamassery, the
Suchzen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march away. The
curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed him that very
place, perched on its crag, overlooking the gigantic valley of
many-hued strata.

  "Ay, ay!" The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of
Chinese work. "Here is the little door through which we bring wood
before winter. And thou- the English know of these things? He who is
now Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe. The Lord- the
Excellent One- He has honour here too? And His life is known?"

  "It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art
rested."

  Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the curator beside him,
went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee and the
appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

  Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the
blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek
convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the
sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the curator supplied it
from his mound of books- French and German, with photographs and
reproductions.

  Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian
story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father
listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin
Devadatta. Here was the wicked woman who accused the Master of
impurity, all confounded; here was the teaching in the Deer-park;
the miracle that stunned the fire-worshippers; here was the Bodhisat
in royal state as a prince; the miraculous birth; the death at
Kusinagara, where the weak disciple fainted; while there were almost
countless repetitions of the meditation under the Bodhi tree; and
the adoration of the alms-bowl was everywhere. In a few minutes the
curator saw that his guest was no mere bead-telling mendicant, but a
scholar of parts. And they went at it all over again, the lama
taking snuff, wiping his spectacles, and talking at railway speed in a
bewildering mixture of Urdu and Tibetan. He had heard of the travels
of the Chinese pilgrims, Fo-Hian and Hwen-Thiang, and was anxious to
know if there was any translation of their record. He drew in his
breath as he turned helplessly over the pages of Beal and Stanislas
Julien. "'Tis all here. A treasure locked." Then he composed himself
reverently to listen to fragments, hastily rendered into Urdu. For the
first time he heard of the labours of European scholars, who by the
help of these and a hundred other documents have identified the Holy
Places of Buddhism. Then he was shown a mighty map, spotted and traced
with yellow. The brown finger followed the curator's pencil from point
to point. Here was Kapilavastu, here the Middle Kingdom, and here
Mahabodi, the Mecca of Buddhism; and here was Kusinagara, sad place of
the Holy One's death. The old man bowed his head over the sheets in
silence for a while, and the curator lit another pipe. Kim had
fallen asleep. When he waked, the talk, still in spate, was more
within his comprehension.

  "And thus it was, O Fountain of Wisdom, that I decided to go to
the Holy Places which His foot had trod- to the Birthplace, even to
Kapila; then to Maha Bodhi, which is Buddh Gaya- to the Monastery-
to the Deer-park- to the place of His death."

  The lama lowered his voice. "And I come here alone. For five- seven-
eighteen- forty years it was in my mind that the Old Law was not
well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms,
and idolatry. Even as the child outside said but now. Ay, even as
the child said, with but-parasti."

  "So it comes with all faiths."

  "Thinkest thou? The books of my lamassery I read, and they were
dried pith; and the later ritual with which we of the Reformed Law
have cumbered ourselves- that, too, had no worth to these old eyes.
Even the followers of the Excellent One are at feud on feud with one
another. It is all illusion. Ay, maya, illusion. But I have another
desire"- the seamed yellow face drew within three inches of the
curator, and the long forefinger nail tapped on the table. "Your
scholars, by these books, have followed the Blessed Feet in all
their wanderings; but there are things which they have not sought out.
I know nothing- nothing do I know- but I go to free myself from the
Wheel of Things by a broad and open road." He smiled with most
simple triumph. "As a pilgrim to the Holy Places I acquire merit.
But there is more. Listen to a true thing. When our gracious Lord,
being as yet a youth, sought a mate, men said, in His father's
court, that He was too tender for marriage. Thou knowest?"

  The curator nodded, wondering what would come next.

  "So they made the triple trial of strength against all comers. And
at the test of the Bow, our Lord first breaking that which they gave
Him, called for such a bow as none might bend. Thou knowest?"

  "It is written. I have read."

  "And, overshooting all other marks, the arrow passed far and far
beyond sight. At the last it fell; and, where it touched earth,
there broke out a stream which presently became a River, whose nature,
by our Lord's beneficence, and that merit He acquired ere He freed
himself, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and
speckle of sin."

  "So it is written," said the curator sadly.

  The lama drew a long breath. "Where is that River? Fountain of
Wisdom, where fell the arrow?"

  "Alas, my brother, I do not know," said the curator.

  "Nay, if it please thee to forget- the one thing only that thou hast
not told me. Surely thou must know? See, I am an old man! I ask with
my head between thy feet, O Fountain of Wisdom. We know He drew the
bow! We know the arrow fell! We know the stream gushed! Where, then,
is the River? My dream told me to find it. So I came. I am here. But
where is the River?"

  "If I knew, think you I would not cry it aloud?"

  "By it one attains freedom from the Wheel of Things," the lama
went on, unheeding. "The River of the Arrow! Think again! Some
little stream, may be- dried in the heats? But the Holy One would
never so cheat an old man."

  "I do not know. I do not know."

  The lama brought his thousand-wrinkled face once more a handsbreadth
from the Englishman's. "I see thou dost not know. Not being of the
Law, the matter is hid from thee."

  "Ay- hidden- hidden."

  "We are both bound, thou and I, my brother. But I"- he rose with a
sweep of the soft thick drapery- "I go to cut myself free. Come also!"

  "I am bound," said the curator. "But whither goest thou?"

  "First to Kashi (Benares): where else? There I shall meet one of the
pure faith in a Jain temple of that city. He also is a Seeker in
secret, and from him haply I may learn. May be he will go with me to
Buddh Gaya. Thence north and west to Kapilavastu, and there will I
seek for the River. Nay, I will seek everywhere as I go- for the place
is not known where the arrow fell."

  "And how wilt thou go? It is a far cry to Delhi, and farther to
Benares."

  "By road and the trains. From Pathankot, having left the Hills, I
came hither in a te-rain. It goes swiftly. At first I was amazed to
see those tall poles by the side of the road snatching up and
snatching up their threads"- he illustrated the stoop and whirl of a
telegraph-pole flashing past the train. "But later, I was cramped
and desired to walk, as I am used."

  "And thou art sure of thy road?" said the curator.

  "Oh, for that one but asks a question and pays money, and the
appointed persons despatch all to the appointed place. That much I
knew in my lamassery from sure report," said the lama proudly.

  "And when dost thou go?" The curator smiled at the mixture of
old-world piety and modern progress that is the note of India to-day.

  "As soon as may be. I follow the places of His life till I come to
the River of the Arrow. There is, moreover, a written paper of the
hours of the trains that go south."

  "And for food?" Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere
about them, but the curator wished to make sure.

  "For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even
as He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with
me when I left the hills a chela (disciple) who begged for me as the
Rule demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died.
I have now no chela, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the
charitable to acquire merit." He nodded his head valiantly.

  Learned doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an
enthusiast in this quest.

  "Be it so," said the curator, smiling. "Suffer me now to acquire
merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of
white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three- thick
and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles."

  The curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but
the power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid
into the lama's hand, saying: "Try these."

  "A feather! A very feather upon the face!" The old man turned his
head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. "How scarcely do I feel
them! How clearly do I see!"

  "They be bilaur- crystal and will never scratch. May they help
thee to thy River, for they are thine."

  "I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book," said the
lama, "as a sign of friendship between priest and priest- and now"- he
fumbled at his belt, detached the open iron-work pencase, and laid
it on the curator's table. "That is for a memory between thee and
me- my pencase. It is something old- even as I am."

  It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not
smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the curator's bosom
had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama
resume his gift.

  "When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a
written picture of the Padma Samthora- such as I used to make on
silk at the lamassery. Yes- and of the Wheel of Life," he chuckled,
"for we be craftsmen together, thou and I."

  The curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who
still have the secret of the conventional brushpen Buddhist pictures
which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But the lama
strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the
great statue of a Bodhisat in meditation, brushed through the
turnstiles.

  Kim followed like a shadow. What he had overheard excited him
wildly. This man was entirely new to all his experience, and he
meant to investigate further: precisely as he would have
investigated a new building or a strange festival in Lahore city.
The lama was his trove, and he purposed to take possession. Kim's
mother had been Irish too.

  The old man halted by Zam-Zammah and looked round till his eye
fell on Kim. The inspiration of his pilgrimage had left him for a
while, and he felt old, forlorn, and very empty.

  "Do not sit under that gun," said the policeman loftily.

  "Huh! Owl!" was Kim's retort on the lama's behalf. "Sit under that
gun if it please thee. When didst thou steal the milk-woman's
slippers, Dunnoo?"

  That was an utterly unfounded charge sprung on the spur of the
moment, but it silenced Dunnoo, who knew that Kim's clear yell could
call up legions of bad bazar boys if need arose.

  "And whom didst thou worship within?" said Kim affably, squatting in
the shade beside the lama.

  "I worshipped none, child. I bowed before the Excellent Law."

  Kim accepted this new god without emotion. He knew already a few
score.

  "And what dost thou do?"

  "I beg. I remember now it is long since I have eaten or drunk.
What is the custom of charity in this town? In silence, as we do of
Tibet, or speaking aloud?"

  "Those who beg in silence starve in silence," said Kim, quoting a
native proverb. The lama tried to rise, but sank back again, sighing
for his disciple, dead in faraway Kulu. Kim watched- head to one side,
considering and interested.

  "Give me the bowl. I know the people of this city- all who are
charitable. Give, and I will bring it back filled."

  Simply as a child the old man handed him the bowl.

  "Rest thou. I know the people."

  He trotted off to the open shop of a kunjri, a low-caste
vegetable-seller, which lay opposite the belt-tramway line down the
Motee Bazar. She knew Kim of old.

  "Oho, hast thou turned yogi with thy begging-bowl?" she cried.

  "Nay," said Kim proudly. "There is a new priest in the city- a man
such as I have never seen."

  "Old priest- young tiger," said the woman angrily. "I am tired of
new priests! They settle on our wares like flies. Is the father of
my son a well of charity to give to all who ask?"

  "No," said Kim. "Thy man is rather yagi (bad-tempered) than yogi
(a holy man). But this priest is new. The Sahib in the Wonder House
has talked to him like a brother. O my mother, fill me this bowl. He
waits."

  "That bowl indeed! That cow-bellied basket! Thou hast as much
grace as the holy bull of Shiv. He has taken the best of a basket of
onions already, this morn; and forsooth, I must fill thy bowl. He
comes here again."

  The huge, mouse-coloured Brahminee bull of the ward was
shouldering his way through the many-coloured crowd, a stolen plantain
hanging out of his mouth. He headed straight for the shop, well
knowing his privileges as a sacred beast, lowered his head, and puffed
heavily along the line of baskets ere making his choice. Up flew Kim's
hard little heel and caught him on his moist blue nose. He snorted
indignantly, and walked away across the tram rails, his hump quivering
with rage.

  "See! I have saved more than the bowl will cost thrice over. Now,
mother, a little rice and some dried fish atop- yes, and some
vegetable curry."

  A growl came out of the back of the shop, where a man lay.

  "He drove away the bull," said the woman in an undertone. "It is
good to give to the poor." She took the bowl and returned it full of
hot rice.

  "But my yogi is not a cow," said Kim gravely, making a hole with his
fingers in the top of the mound. "A little curry is good, and a
fried cake, and a morsel of conserve would please him, I think."

  "It is a hole as big as thy head," said the woman fretfully. But she
filled it, none the less, with good, steaming vegetable curry, clapped
a dried cake atop, and a morsel of clarified butter on the cake,
dabbed a lump of sour tamarind conserve at the side; and Kim looked at
the load lovingly.

  "That is good. When I am in the bazar the bull shall not come to
this house. He is a bold beggarman."

  "And thou?" laughed the woman. "But speak well of bulls. Hast thou
not told me that some day a Red Bull will come out of a field to
help thee? Now hold all straight and ask for the holy man's blessing
upon me. Perhaps, too, he knows a cure for my daughter's sore eyes.
Ask him that also, O thou Little Friend of all the World."

  But Kim had danced off ere the end of the sentence, dodging pariah
dogs and hungry acquaintances.

  "Thus do we beg who know the way of it," said he proudly to the
lama, who opened his eyes at the contents of the bowl. "Eat now and- I
will eat with thee. Ohe bhistie!" he called to the water-carrier,
sluicing the crotons by the Museum. "Give water here. We men are
thirsty."

  "We men!" said the bhistie, laughing. "Is one skinful enough for
such a pair? Drink then, in the name of the Compassionate."

  He loosed a thin stream into Kim's hands, who drank native
fashion; but the lama must needs pull out a cup from his inexhaustible
upper draperies and drink ceremonially.

  "Pardesi" (a foreigner), Kim explained, as the old man delivered
in an unknown tongue what was evidently a blessing.

  They ate together in great content, clearing the beggar's bowl. Then
the lama took snuff from a portentous wooden snuff-gourd, fingered his
rosary awhile, and so dropped into the easy sleep of age, as the
shadow of Zam-Zammah grew long.

  Kim loafed over to the nearest tobacco-seller, a rather lively young
Mohammedan woman, and begged a rank cigar of the brand that they
sell to students of the Punjab University who copy English customs.
Then he smoked and thought, knees to chin, under the belly of the gun,
and the outcome of his thoughts was a sudden and stealthy departure in
the direction of Nila Ram's timber-yard.

  The lama did not wake till the evening life of the city had begun
with lamp-lighting and the return of white-robed clerks and
subordinates from the Government offices. He stared dizzily in all
directions, but none looked at him save a Hindu urchin in a dirty
turban and Isabella-coloured clothes. Suddenly he bowed his head on
his knees and wailed.

  "What is this?" said the boy, standing before him. "Hast thou been
robbed?"

  "It is my new chela (my disciple) that is gone away from me, and I
know not where he is."

  "And what like of man was thy disciple?"

  "It was a boy who came to me in place of him who died, on account of
the merit which I had gained when I bowed before the Law within
there." He pointed towards the Museum. "He came upon me to show me a
road which I had lost. He led me into the Wonder House, and by his
talk emboldened to speak to the Keeper of the Images, so that I was
cheered and made strong. And when I was faint with hunger he begged
for me, as would a chela for his teacher. Suddenly was he sent.
Suddenly has he gone away. It was in my mind to have taught him the
Law upon the road to Benares."

  Kim stood amazed at this, because he had overheard the talk in the
Museum, and knew that the old man was speaking the truth, which is a
thing a native on the road seldom presents to a stranger.

  "But I see now that he was but sent for a purpose. By this I know
that I shall find a certain River for which I seek."

  "The River of the Arrow?" said Kim, with a superior smile.

  "Is this yet another Sending?" cried the lama. "To none have I
spoken of my search, save to the Priest of the Images. Who art thou?"

  "Thy chela," said Kim simply, sitting on his heels. "I have never
seen anyone like to thee in all this my life. I go with thee to
Benares. And, too, I think that so old a man as thou, speaking the
truth to chance-met people at dusk, is in great need of a disciple."

  "But the River- the River of the Arrow?"

  "Oh, that I heard when thou wast speaking to the Englishman. I lay
against the door."

  The lama sighed. "I thought thou hadst been a guide permitted.
Such things fall sometimes- but I am not worthy. Thou dost not,
then, know of the River?"

  "Not I." Kim laughed uneasily. "I go to look for- for a bull- a
Red Bull on a green field who shall help me." Boy-like, if an
acquaintance had a scheme, Kim was quite ready with one of his own;
and, boy-like, he had really thought for as much as twenty minutes
at a time of his father's prophecy.

  "To what, child?" said the lama.

  "God knows, but so my father told me. I heard thy talk in the Wonder
House of all those new strange places in the Hills, and if one so
old and so little- so used to truth-telling- may go out for the
small matter of a river, it seemed to me that I too must go
a-travelling. If it is our fate to find those things we shall find
them- thou, thy River; and I, my Bull, and the strong Pillars and some
other matters that I forget."

  "It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free," said the
lama.

  "That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king," said Kim,
serenely prepared for anything.

  "I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road," the lama
replied in the voice of authority. "Let us go to Benares."

  "Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day."

  "But there is no place to sleep." The old man was used to the
order of his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the Rule
decrees, preferred a decency in these things.

  "We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai," said Kim, laughing
at his perplexity. "I have a friend there. Come!"

  The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their
way through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the lama
mooned through it like a man in a dream. It was his first experience
of a large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-car with its
continually squealing brakes frightened him. Half pushed, half
towed, he arrived at the high gate of the Kashmir Serai: that huge
open square over against the railway station, surrounded with arched
cloisters where the camel and horse caravans put up on their return
from Central Asia. Here were all manner of Northern folk, tending
tethered ponies and kneeling camels; loading and unloading bales and
bundles; drawing water for the evening meal at the creaking
well-windlasses; piling grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed
stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers;
taking on new grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in
the packed square. The cloisters, reached by three or four masonry
steps, made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. Most of
them were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the
space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into
rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous native
padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner was away, and a few rude-
sometimes very rude- chalk or paint scratches told where he had
gone. Thus: "Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan." Below, in coarse
verse; "O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on the coat of a Kabuli,
why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to live so long?"

  Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts, sidled
along the cloisters to the far end, nearest the railway station, where
Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came in from that
mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.

  Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life- especially
between his tenth and his thirteenth year- and the big burly Afghan,
his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was elderly and did not
wish his gray hairs to show), knew the boy's value as a gossip.
Sometimes he would tell Kim to watch a man who had nothing whatever to
do with horses: to follow him for one whole day and report every
soul with whom he talked. Kim would deliver himself of his tale at
evening, and Mahbub would listen without a word or gesture. It was
intrigue of some kind, Kim knew; but its worth lay in saying nothing
whatever to anyone except Mahbub, who gave him beautiful meals all hot
from the cookshop at the head of the serai, and once as much as
eight annas in money.

  "He is here," said Kim, hitting a bad-tempered camel on the nose.
"Ohe, Mahbub Ali!" He halted at a dark arch and slipped behind the
bewildered lama.

  The horse-trader, his deep, embroidered Bokhariot belt unloosed, was
lying on a pair of silk carpet saddle-bags, pulling lazily at an
immense silver hookah. He turned his head very slightly at the cry;
and seeing only the tall silent figure, chuckled in his deep chest.

  "Allah! A lama! A Red Lama! It is far from Lahore to the Passes.
What dost thou do here?"

  The lama held out the begging-bowl mechanically.

  "God's curse on all unbelievers!" said Mahbub. "I do not give to a
lousy Tibetan; but ask my Baltis over yonder behind the camels. They
may value your blessings. Oh, horse-boys, here is a countryman of
yours. See if he be hungry."

  A shaven, crouching Balti, who had come down with the horses, and
who was nominally some sort of degraded Buddhist, fawned upon the
priest, and in thick gutturals besought the Holy One to sit at the
horse-boys' fire.

  "Go!" said Kim, pushing him lightly, and the lama strode away,
leaving Kim at the edge of the cloister.

  "Go!" said Mahbub Ali, returning to his hookah. "Little Hindu, run
away. God's curse on all unbelievers! Beg from those of my tail who
are of thy faith."

  "Maharaj," whined Kim, using the Hindu form of address, and
thoroughly enjoying the situation; "my father is dead- my mother is
dead- my stomach is empty."

  "Beg from my men among the horses, I say. There must be some
Hindus in my tail."

  "Oh, Mahbub Ali, but am I a Hindu?" said Kim in English.

  The trader gave no sign of astonishment, but looked under shaggy
eyebrows.

  "Little Friend of all the World," said he, "what is this?"

  "Nothing. I am now that holy man's disciple; and we go a
pilgrimage together- to Benares, he says. He is quite mad, and I am
tired of Lahore city. I wish new air and water."

  "But for whom dost thou work? Why come to me?" The voice was harsh
with suspicion.

  "To whom else should I come? I have no money. It is not good to go
about without money. Thou wilt sell many horses to the officers.
They are very fine horses, these new ones: I have seen them. Give me a
rupee, Mahbub Ali, and when I come to my wealth I will give thee a
bond and pay."

  "Um," said Mahbub Ali, thinking swiftly. "Thou hast never before
lied to me. Call that lama- stand back in the dark."

  "Oh, our tales will agree," said Kim laughing.

  "We go to Benares," said the lama, as soon as he understood the
drift of Mahbub Ali's questions. "The boy and I. I go to seek for a
certain River."

  "Maybe- but the boy?"

  "He is my disciple. He was sent, I think, to guide me to that River.
Sitting under a gun was I when he came suddenly. Such things have
befallen the fortunate to whom guidance was allowed. But I remember
now, he said he was of this world- a Hindu."

  "And his name?"

  "That I did not ask. Is he not my disciple?"

  "His country- his face- his village? Mussalman- Sikh- Hindu- Jain-
low caste or high?"

  "Why should I ask? There is neither high nor low in the Middle
Way. If he is my chela- does- will- can anyone take him from me?
For, look you, without him I shall not find my River." He wagged his
head solemnly.

  "None shall take him from thee. Go, sit among my Baltis," said
Mahbub Ali, and the lama drifted off, soothed by the promise.

  "Is he not quite mad?" said Kim, coming forward to the light
again. "Why should I lie to thee, Hajji?"

  Mahbub puffed his hookah in silence. Then he began, almost
whispering: "Umballa is on the road to Benares- if indeed ye two go
there."

  "Tck! Tck! I tell thee he does not know how to lie- as we two know."

  "And if thou wilt carry a message for me as far as Umballa, I will
give thee money. It concerns a horse- a white stallion which I have
sold to an officer upon the last time I returned from the Passes.
But then- stand nearer and hold up hands as begging- the pedigree of
the white stallion was not fully established, and that officer, who is
now at Umballa, bade me make it clear." (Mahbub here described the
horse and the appearance of the officer.) "So the message to that
officer will be: 'The pedigree of the white stallion is fully
established.' By this will he know that thou comest from me. He will
then say 'What proof has thou?' and thou wilt answer: 'Mahbub Ali
has given me the proof.'"

  "And all for the sake of a white stallion," said Kim, with a giggle,
his eyes aflame.

  "That pedigree I will give thee now- in my own fashion- and some
hard words as well." A shadow passed behind Kim, and a feeding
camel. Mahbub Ali raised his voice.

  "Allah! Art thou the only beggar in the city? Thy mother is dead.
Thy father is dead. So is it with all of them. Well, well-" he
turned as feeling on the floor beside him and tossed a flap of soft,
greasy Mussalman bread to the boy. "Go and lie among my horse-boys for
to-night- thou and the lama. Tomorrow I may give thee service."

  Kim slunk away, his teeth in the bread, and, as he expected, he
found a small wad of folded tissue-paper wrapped in oilskin, with
three silver rupees- enormous largesse. He smiled and thrust money and
paper into his leather amulet-case. The lama, sumptuously fed by
Mahbub's Baltis, was already asleep in a corner of one of the
stalls. Kim lay down beside him and laughed. He knew he had rendered a
service to Mahbub Ali, and not for one little minute did he believe
the tale of the stallion's pedigree.

  But Kim did not suspect that Mahbub Ali, known as one of the best
horse-dealers in the Punjab, a wealthy and enterprising trader,
whose caravans penetrated far and far into the Back of Beyond, was
registered in one of the locked books of the Indian Survey
Department as C.25.1B. Twice or thrice yearly C.25 would send in a
little story, badly told but most interesting, and generally- it was
checked by the statements of R.17 and M.4- quite true. It concerned
all manner of out-of-the-way mountain principalities, explorers of
nationalities other than English, and the gun-trade- was, in brief,
a small portion of that vast mass of "information received" on which
the Indian Government acts. But, recently, five confederated Kings,
who had no business to confederate, had been informed by a kindly
Northern Power that there was a leakage of news from their territories
into British India. So those Kings' prime ministers were seriously
annoyed and took steps, after the Oriental fashion. They suspected,
among many others, the bullying red-bearded horse-dealer whose
caravans ploughed through their fastnesses belly deep in snow. At
least, his caravan that season had been ambushed and shot at twice
on the way down, when Mahbub's men accounted for three strange
ruffians who might, or might not, have been hired for the job.
Therefore Mahbub had avoided halting at the insalubrious city of
Peshawur, and had come through without stop to Lahore, where,
knowing his country-people, he anticipated curious developments.

  And there was that on Mahbub Ali which he did not wish to keep an
hour longer than was necessary- a wad of closely folded
tissue-paper, wrapped in oilskin- an impersonal, unaddressed
statement, with five microscopic pin-holes in one corner, that most
scandalously betrayed the five confederated Kings, the sympathetic
Northern Power, a Hindu banker in Peshawur, a firm of gun-makers in
Belgium, and an important, semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the
south. This last was R.17's work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond
the Dora Pass and was carrying in for R.17, who, owing to
circumstances over which he had no control, could not leave his post
of observation. Dynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of
C.25; and even an Oriental, with an Oriental's views of the value of
time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better.
Mahbub had no particular desire to die by violence, because two or
three family blood-feuds across the border hung unfinished on his
hands, and when these scores were cleared he intended to settle down
as a more or less virtuous citizen. He had never passed the serai gate
since his arrival two days ago, but had been ostentatious in sending
telegrams to Bombay, where be banked some of his money; to Delhi,
where a sub-partner of his own clan was selling horses to the agent of
a Rajputana state; and to Umballa, where an Englishman was excitedly
demanding the pedigree of a white stallion. The public
letter-writer, who knew English, composed excellent telegrams, such
as:- "Creighton, Laurel Bank, Umballa- Horse is Arabian as already
advised. Sorrowful delayed-pedigree which am translating." And later
to the same address: "Much sorrowful delay. Will forward pedigree." To
this sub-partner at Delhi he wired: "Lutuf Ullah- Have wired two
thousand rupees your credit Luchman Narain's bank." This was
entirely in the way of trade, but every one of those telegrams was
discussed and re-discussed by parties who conceived themselves to be
interested, before they went over to the railway station in charge
of a foolish Balti, who allowed all sorts of people to read them on
the road.

  When, in Mahbub's own picturesque language, he had muddied the wells
of inquiry with the stick of precaution, Kim had dropped on him,
sent from heaven; and, being as prompt as he was unscrupulous,
Mahbub Ali, used to taking all sorts of gusty chances, pressed him
into service on the spot.

  A wandering lama with a low-caste boy-servant might attract a
moment's interest as they wandered about India, the land of
pilgrims; but no one would suspect them or, what was more to the
point, rob.

  He called for a new light-ball to his hookah, and considered the
case. If the worst came to the worst, and the boy came to harm, the
paper would incriminate nobody. And he would go up to Umballa
leisurely and- at a certain risk of exciting fresh suspicion- repeat
his tale by word of mouth to the people concerned.

  But R.17's report was the kernel of the whole affair, and it would
be distinctly inconvenient if that failed to come to hand. However,
God was great, and Mahbub Ali felt he had done all he could for the
time being. Kim was the one soul in the world who had never told him a
lie. That would have been a fatal blot on Kim's character if Mahbub
had not known that to others, for his own ends or Mahbub's business,
Kim could lie like an Oriental.

  Then Mahbub Ali rolled across the serai to the Gate of the Harpies
who paint their eyes and trap the stranger, and was at some pains to
call on the one girl who, he had reason to believe, was a particular
friend of a smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit who had waylaid his simple
Balti in the matter of the telegrams. It was an utterly foolish
thing to do; because they fell to drinking perfumed brandy against the
Law of the Prophet, and Mahbub grew wonderfully drunk, and the gates
of his mouth were loosened, and he pursued the Flower of Delight
with the feet of intoxication till he fell flat among the cushions,
where the Flower of Delight, aided by a smooth-faced Kashmiri
pundit, searched him from head to foot most thoroughly.

  About the same hour Kim heard soft feet in Mahbub's deserted
stall. The horse-trader, curiously enough, had left his door unlocked,
and his men were busy celebrating their return to India with a whole
sheep of Mahbub's bounty. A sleek young gentleman from Delhi, armed
with a bunch of keys which the Flower had unshackled from the
senseless one's belt, went through every single box, bundle, mat,
and saddlebag in Mahbub's possession even more systematically than the
Flower and the pundit were searching the owner.

  "And I think," said the Flower scornfully an hour later, one rounded
elbow on the snoring carcase, "that he is no more than a pig of an
Afghan horse-dealer, with no thought except women and horses.
Moreover, he may have sent it away by now- if ever there were such a
thing."

  "Nay- in a matter touching Five Kings it would be next his black
heart," said the pundit. "Was there nothing?"

  The Delhi man laughed and resettled his turban as he entered. "I
searched between the soles of his slippers as the Flower searched
his clothes. This is not the man but another. I leave little unseen."

  "They did not say he was the very man," said the pundit
thoughtfully. "They said, 'Look if he be the man, since our councils
are troubled.'"

  "That North country is full of horse-dealers as an old coat of lice.
There is Sikandar Khan, Nur Ali Beg, and Farrukh Shah- all heads of
Kafilas- who deal there," said the Flower.

  "They have not yet come in," said the pundit. "Thou must ensnare
them later."

  "Phew!" said the Flower with deep disgust, rolling Mahbub's head
from her lap. "I earn my money. Farrukh Shah is a bear, Ali Beg a
swashbuckler, and old Sikandar Khan- yaie! Go! I sleep now. This swine
will not stir till dawn."

  When Mahbub woke, the Flower talked to him severely on the sin of
drunkenness. Asiatics do not wink when they have outmanoeuvred an
enemy, but as Mahbub Ali cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and
staggered forth under the early morning stars, he came very near to
it.

  "What a colt's trick," said he to himself. "As if every girl in
Peshawur did not use it! But 'twas prettily done. Now God He knows how
many more there be upon the road who have orders to test me- perhaps
with the knife. So it stands that the boy must go to Umballa- and by
rail- for the writing is somthing urgent. I abide here, following
the Flower and drinking wine as an Afghan coper should."

  He halted at the stall next but one to his own. His men lay there
heavy with sleep. There was no sign of Kim or the lama.

  "Up!" He stirred a sleeper. "Whither went those who lay here last
even- the lama and the boy? Is aught missing?"

  "Nay," grunted the man; "the old madman rose at second cockcrow
saying he would go to Benares, and the young one led him away."

  "The curse of Allah on all unbelievers," said Mahbub heartily, and
climbed into his own stall, growling in his beard.

  But it was Kim who had wakened the lama- Kim with one eye laid
against a knot-hole in the planking, who had seen the Delhi man's
search through the boxes. This was no common thief that turned over
letters, bills, and saddles- no mere burglar who ran a little knife
sideways into the soles of Mahbub's slippers, or picked the seams of
the saddle-bags so deftly. At first Kim had been minded to give the
alarm- the long-drawn "cho-or- choor!" (thief! thief!) that sets the
serai ablaze of nights; but he looked more carefully, and, hand on
amulet, drew his own conclusions.

  "It must be the pedigree of that made-up horse-lie," said he, "the
thing that I carry to Umballa. Better that we go now. Those who search
bags with knives may presently search bellies with knives. Surely
there is a woman behind this. Hai! Hai!" in a whisper to the
light-sleeping old man. "Come. It is time- time to go to Benares."

  The lama rose obediently, and they passed out of the serai like
shadows.

                                   2

                 "For whoso will, from Pride released,

                  Contemning neither creed nor priest,

                  May hear the Soul of all the East

                    About him at Kamakura."

  They entered the fort-like raIlway station, black in the end of
night; the electrics sizzling over the goods yard where they handle
the heavy Northern grain-traffic.

  "This is the work of devils!" said the lama, recoiling from the
hollow echoing darkness, the glimmer of rails between the masonry
platforms, and the maze of girders above. He stood in a gigantic stone
hall paved, it seemed, with the sheeted dead- third-class passengers
who had taken their tickets overnight and were sleeping in the
waiting-rooms. All hours of the twenty-four are alike to Orientals,
and their passenger traffic is regulated accordingly.

  "This is where the fire-carriages come. One stands behind that
hole"- Kim pointed to the ticket-office- "who will give thee a paper
to take thee to Umballa.

  "But we go to Benares," he replied petulantly.

  "All one. Benares then. Quick: she comes!"

  "Take thou the purse."

  The lama, not so well used to trains as he had pretended, started as
the 3.25 a.m. south bound roared in. The sleepers sprang to life,
and the station filled with clamour and shoutings, cries of water
and sweetmeat vendors, shouts of native policemen, and shrill yells of
women gathering up their baskets, their families, and their husbands.

  "It is the train- only the te-rain. It will come here. Wait!" Amazed
at the lama's immense simplicity (he had handed him a small bag full
of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket to Umballa. A sleepy clerk
grunted and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six miles
distant.

  "Nay," said Kim, scanning it with a grin. "This may serve for
farmers, but I live in the city of Lahore. It was cleverly done, babu.
Now give the ticket to Umballa."

  The babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

  "Now another to Amritzar," said Kim, who had no notion of spending
Mahbub Ali's money on anything so crude as a paid ride to Umballa.
"The price is so much. The small money in return is just so much. I
know the ways of the te-rain.... Never did yogi need chela as thou
dost," he went on merrily to the bewildered lama. "They would have
flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me. This way! Come." He returned
the money, keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the
Umballa ticket as his commission- the immemorial commission of Asia.

  The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class
carriage. "Were it not better to walk?" said he weakly.

  A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. "Is he afraid?
Do not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid of the
te-rain. Enter! This thing is the work of the Government."

  "I do not fear," said the lama. "Have ye room within for two?"

  "There is no room even for a mouse," shrilled the wife of a
well-to-do cultivator- a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur district.
"Our night trains are not as well looked after as the day ones,
where the sexes are very strictly kept to separate carriages."

  "Oh, mother of my son, we can make space," said the blue-turbaned
husband. "Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see'st thou?"

  "And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him sit
on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!" She looked round for
approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed behind her
head drapery.

  "Enter! Enter!" cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded
account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: "It is well
to be kind to the poor."

  "Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn
calf," said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all
laughed.

  "Will it travel to Benares?" said the lama.

  "Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left," cried
Kim.

  "See!" shrilled the Amritzar girl. "He has never entered a train. Oh
see!"

  "Nay, help," said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand and
hauling him in. "Thus is it done, father."

  "But- but- I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on a
bench," said the lama. "Moreover, it cramps me."

  "I say," began the money-lender, pursing his lips, "that there is
not one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us to
break. We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples."

  "Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones," said the wife,
scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.

  "I said we might have gone by cart along the road," said the
husband, "and thus have saved some money."

  "Yes- and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way. That
was talked out ten thousand times."

  "Ay, by ten thousand tongues," grunted he.

  "The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak. Oho! He is of that
sort which may not look at or reply to a woman." For the lama,
constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of her. "And his
disciple is like him?"

  "Nay, mother," said Kim most promptly. "Not when the woman is
well-looking and above all charitable to the hungry."

  "A beggar's answer," said the Sikh, laughing. "Thou hast brought
it on thyself, sister!" Kim's hands were crooked in supplication.

  "And whither goest thou?" said the woman, handing him the half of
a cake from a greasy package.

  "Even to Benares."

  "Jugglers belike?" the young soldier suggested. "Have ye any
tricks to pass the time? Why does not that yellow man answer?"

  "Because," said Kim stoutly, "he is holy, and thinks upon matters
hidden from thee."

  "That may be well. We of the Loodhiana Sikhs," he rolled it out
sonorously, "do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight."

  "My sister's brother's son is naik (corporal) in that regiment,"
said the Sikh craftsman quietly. "There are also some Dogra
companies there." The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste
than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.

  "They are all one to me," said the Amritzar girl.

  "That we believe," snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly.

  "Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands
are, as it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the
caste, but beyond that again"- she looked round timidly- "the bond
of the Pulton- the Regiment- eh?"

  "My brother is in a Jat regiment," said the cultivator. "Dogras be
good men."

  "Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion," said the soldier, with
a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. "Thy Sikhs thought so
when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the
face of eight Afreedee standards on the ridge not three months gone."

  He told the story of a border action in which the Dogra companies of
the Loodhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar girl
smiled; for she knew the tale was to win her approval.

  "Alas!" said the cultivator's wife at the end. "So their villages
were burnt and their little children made homeless?"

  "They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of the
Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?"

  "Ay, and here they cut our tickets," said the banker, fumbling at
his belt.

  The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came
round. Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where
people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim
produced his and was told to get out.

  "But I go to Umballa," he protested. "I go with this holy man."

  "Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care. This ticket is only
to Amritzar. Out!

  Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his
father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's declining
years, and that the lama would die without his care. All the
carriage bade the guard be merciful- the banker was specially eloquent
here- but the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked,
he could not overtake the situation and Kim lifted up his voice and
wept outside the carriage window.

  "I am very poor. My father is dead- my mother is dead. Oh,
charitable ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?"

  "What- what is this?" the lama repeated. "He must go to Benares.
He must come with me. He is my chela. If there is money to be paid-"

  "Oh, be silent," whispered Kim; "are we Rajahs to throw away good
silver when the world is so charitable?"

  The Amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her
that Kim kept his watchful eye. Ladies of that persuasion, he knew,
were generous.

  "A ticket- a little tikkut to Umballa- O Breaker of Hearts!" She
laughed. "Hast thou no charity?"

  "Does the holy man come from the North?"

  "From far and far in the North he comes," cried Kim. "From among the
hills."

  "There is snow among the pine trees in the North- in the hills there
is snow. My mother was from Kulu. Get thee a ticket. Ask him for a
blessing."

  "Ten thousand blessings," shrilled Kim. "O Holy One, a woman has
given us in charity so that I can come with thee- a woman with a
golden heart. I run for the tikkut."

  The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to
the platform. He bowed his head that he might not see her, and
muttered in Tibetan as she passed on with the crowd.

  "Light come- light go," said the cultivator's wife viciously.

  "She has acquired merit," returned the lama. "Beyond doubt it was
a nun."

  "There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone. Return, old man,
or the train may depart without thee," cried the banker.

  "Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food
also," said Kim, leaping to his place. "Now eat, Holy One. Look. Day
comes!"

  Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away
across the flat green levels. All the rich Punjab lay out in the
splendour of the keen sun. The lama flinched a little as the
telegraph-posts swung by.

  "Great is the speed of the train," said the banker, with a
patronising grin. "We have gone farther since Lahore than thou couldst
walk in two days: at even, we shall enter Umballa."

  "And that is still far from Benares," said the lama wearily,
mumbling over the cakes that Kim offered. They all unloosed their
bundles and made their morning meal. Then the banker, the
cultivator, and the soldier prepared their pipes and wrapped the
compartment in choking, acrid smoke, spitting and coughing and
enjoying themselves. The Sikh and the cultivator's wife chewed pan;
the lama took snuff and told his beads, while Kim, cross-legged,
smiled over the comfort of a full stomach.

  "What rivers have ye by Benares?" said the lama of a sudden to the
carriage at large.

  "We have Gunga," returned the banker, when the little titter had
subsided.

  "What others?"

  "What other than Gunga?"

  "Nay, but in my mind was the thought of a certain River of healing."

  "That is Gunga. Who bathes in her is made clean and goes to the
Gods. Thrice have I made pilgrimage to Gunga." He looked round
proudly.

  "There was need," said the young sepoy drily, and the travellers'
laugh turned against the banker.

  "Clean- to return again to the Gods," the lama muttered. "And to
go forth on the round of lives anew- still tied to the Wheel." He
shook his head testily. "But maybe there is a mistake. Who, then, made
Gunga in the beginning?"

  "The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?" the banker said appalled.

  "I follow the Law- the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that
made Gunga. What like of Gods were they?"

  The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable that
anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.

  "What- what is thy God?" said the money-lender at last.

  "Hear!" said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. "Hear: for I
speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!"

  He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his
own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese
book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on
reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in
strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal;
dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning
and will continue to the end.

  "Um!" said the soldier of the Loodhiana Sikhs. 'There was a
Mohammedan regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a priest
of theirs- he was, as I remember, a naik- when the fit was on him,
spake prophecies. But the mad all are in God's keeping. His officers
overlooked much in that man."

  The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange
land. "Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the bow,"
he said.

  This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while
he told it. "Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River. Know ye
aught that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case."

  "There is Gunga- and Gunga alone- who washes away sin," ran the
murmur round the carriage.

  "Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way," said the
cultivator's wife, looking out of window. "See how they have blessed
the crops."

  "To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter," said her
husband. "For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land
suffices, and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Homestead." He shrugged
one knotted, bronzed shoulder.

  "Think you our Lord came so far north?" said the lama, turning to
Kim.

  "It may be," Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on the
floor.

  "The last of the Great Ones," said the Sikh with authority, "was
Sikander Julkarn (Alexander the Great). He paved the streets of
Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds
to this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God."

  "Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi," said the young soldier
jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. That is all that makes a
Sikh." But he did not say this very loud.

  The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. In
the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning- "Om mane
pudme hum! Om mane pudme hum!"- and the thick click of the wooden
rosary beads.

  "It irks me," he said at last. "The speed and the clatter irk me.
Moreover, my chela, I think that may be we have overpassed that
River."

  "Peace, peace," said Kim. "Was not the River near Benares? We are
yet far from the place."

  "But- if our Lord came north, it may be any one of these little ones
that we have run across.

  "I do not know."

  "But thou wast sent to me- wast thou sent to me?- for the merit I
had acquired over yonder at Suchzen. From beside the cannon didst thou
come- bearing two faces- and two garbs."

  "Peace. One must not speak of these things here," whispered Kim.
"There was but one of me. Think again and thou wilt remember. A boy- a
Hindu boy- by the great green cannon."

  "But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard- holy-
among images- who himself made more sure my assurance of the River
of the Arrow?"

  "He- we- went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the Gods
there," Kim explained to the openly listening company. "And the
Sahib of the Wonder House talked to him- yes, this is truth- as a
brother. He is a very holy man from far beyond the hills. Rest thou.
In time we come to Umballa."

  "But my River- the River of my healing?"

  "And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on
foot. So that we miss nothing- not even a little rivulet in a
fieldside."

  "But thou hast a Search of thine own?" The lama- very pleased that
he remembered so well- sat bolt upright.

  "Ay," said Kim, humouring him. The boy was entirely happy to be
out chewing pan and seeing new people in the great good-tempered
world.

  "It was a Bull- a Red Bull that shall come and help thee- and
carry thee- whither? I have forgotten. A Red Bull on a green field,
was it not?"

  "Nay, it will carry me nowhere," said Kim. "It is but a tale I
told thee."

  "What is this?" the cultivator's wife leaned forward, her
bracelets clinking on her arm. "Do ye both dream dreams? A Red Bull on
a green field, that shall carry thee to the Heavens- or what? Was it a
vision? Did one make a prophecy? We have a Red Bull in our village
behind Jullundur city, and he grazes by choice in the very greenest of
our fields!"

  "Give a woman an old wife's tale and a weaver-bird a leaf and a
thread, they will weave wonderful things," said the Sikh. "All holy
men dream dreams, and by following holy men their disciples attain
that power."

  "A Red Bull on a green field, was it?" the lama repeated. "In a
former life it may be thou hast acquired merit, and the Bull will come
to reward thee."

  "Nay- nay- it was but a tale one told to me- for a jest belike.
But I will seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy
River and rest from the clatter of the train."

  "It may be that the Bull knows- that he is sent to guide us both,"
said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating
Kim: "This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of
this world."

  "Beggars a plenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a
yogi nor such a disciple," said the woman.

  Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled.
But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him
their best.

  And at last- tired, sleepy, and dusty- they reached Umballa City
Station.

  "We abide here upon a law-suit," said the cultivator's wife to
Kim. "We lodge with my man's cousin's younger brother. There is room
also in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. Will- will he give me
a blessing?"

  "O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the
night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have
been helped since the dawn!"

  The lama bowed his head in benediction.

  "To fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels-" the
husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

  "Thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something
yet on his daughter's marriage-feast," said the woman crisply. "Let
him put their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I doubt not."

  "Ay, I beg for him," said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under
shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali's Englishman
and deliver himself of the white stallion's pedigree.

  "Now," said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner
courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, "I go away
for a while- to- to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad
till I return."

  "Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?" The old man caught at
his wrist. "And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too
late to look to-night for the River?"

  "Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on
the road- an hundred kos from Lahore already."

  "Yea- and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and
terrible world."

  Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his
own and a few score thousand other folks fate slung round his neck.
Mahbub Ali's directions left him little doubt of the house in which
his Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-cart home from the
Club, made him quite sure. It remained only to identify his man, and
Kim slipped through the garden hedge and hid in a clump of plumed
grass close to the veranda. The house blazed with lights, and servants
moved about tables dressed with flowers, glass, and silver.
Presently forth came an Englishman, dressed in black and white,
humming a tune. It was too dark to see his face, so Kim,
beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

  "Protector of the Poor!"

  The man backed towards the voice.

  "Mahbub Ali says-"

  "Hah! What says Mahbub Ali?" He made no attempt to look for the
speaker, and that showed Kim that he knew.

  "The pedigree of the white stallion is fully established."

  "What proof is there?" The Englishman switched at the rose-hedge
in the side of the drive.

  "Mahbub Ali has given me this proof." Kim flipped the wad of
folded paper into the air, and it fell on the path beside the man, who
put his foot on it as a gardener came round the corner. When the
servant passed he picked it up, dropped a rupee- Kim could hear the
clink- and strode into the house, never turning round. Swiftly Kim
took up the money; but, for all his training, he was Irish enough by
birth to reckon silver the least part of any game. What he desired was
the visible effect of action; so, instead of slinking away, he lay
close in the grass and wormed nearer to the house.

  He saw- Indian bungalows are open through and through- the
Englishman return to a small dressing-room, in a corner of the
veranda, that was half-office, littered with papers and
despatch-boxes, and sit down to study Mahbub Ali's message. His
face, by the full ray of the kerosene lamp, changed and darkened,
and Kim, used as every beggar must be to watching countenances, took
good note.

  "Will! Will, dear!" called a woman's voice. "You ought to be in
the drawing-room. They'll be here in a minute."

  The man still read intently.

  "Will!" said the voice, five minutes later. "He's come. I can hear
the troopers in the drive."

  The man dashed out bareheaded as a big landau with four native
troopers behind it halted at the veranda, and a tall, black-haired
man, erect as an arrow, swung out, preceded by a young officer who
laughed pleasantly.

  Flat on his belly lay Kim, almost touching the high wheels. His
man and the black stranger exchanged two sentences.

  "Certainly, sir," said the young officer promptly. "Everything waits
while a horse is concerned."

  "We shan't be more than twenty minutes," said Kim's man. "You can do
the honours- keep 'em amused, and all that."

  "Tell one of the troopers to wait," said the tall man, and they both
passed into the dressing-room together as the landau rolled away.
Kim saw their heads bent over Mahbub Ali's message, and heard the
voices- one low and deferential the other sharp and decisive.

  "It isn't a question of weeks. It is a question of days- hours
almost," said the elder. "I'd been expecting it for some time, but
this"- he tapped Mahbub Ali's paper- "clinches it. Grogan's dining
here to-night, isn't he?"

  "Yes, sir, and Macklin too."

  "Very good. I'll speak to them myself. That matter will be
referred to the Council, of course, but this is a case where one is
justified in assuming that we take action at once. Warn the Pindi
and Peshawur brigades. It will disorganise all the summer reliefs, but
we can't help that. This comes of not smashing them thoroughly the
first time. Eight thousand should be enough."

  "What about artillery, sir?"

  "I must consult Macklin."

  "Then it means war?"

  "No. Punishment. When a man is bound by the action of his
predecessor- "

  "But C.25 may have lied."

  "He bears out the other's information. Practically, they showed
their hand six months back. But Devenish would have it there was a
chance of peace. Of course they used it to make themselves stronger.
Send off those telegrams at once- the new code, not the old- mine
and Wharton's. I don't think we need keep the ladies waiting any
longer. We can settle the rest over the cigars. I thought it was
coming. It's punishment- not war."

  As the trooper cantered off Kim crawled round to the back of the
house, where, going on his Lahore experiences, he judged there would
be food- and information. The kitchen was crowded with excited
scullions, one of whom kicked him.

  "Aie," said Kim, feigning tears. "I came only to wash dishes in
return for a bellyful."

  "All Umballa is on the same errand. Get hence. They go in now with
the soup. Think you that we who serve Creighton Sahib need strange
scullions to help us through a big dinner?"

  "It is a very big dinner," said Kim, looking at the plates.

  "Small wonder. The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-Lat
Sahib" (the Commander-in-Chief).

  "Ho!" said Kim, with the correct guttural note of wonder. He had
learned what he wanted, and when the scullion turned he was gone.

  "And all that trouble," said he to himself, thinking as usual in
Hindustanee, "for a horse's pedigree! Mahbub Ali should have come to
me to learn a little lying. Every time before that I have borne a
message it concerned a woman. Now it is men. Better. The tall man said
that they will loose a great army to punish some one- somewhere- the
news goes to Pindi and Peshawur. There are also guns. Would I had
crept nearer. It is big news!"

  He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother
discussing the family lawsuit in all its bearings with the
cultivator and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. After
the evening meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim felt very
much of a man as he pulled at the smooth cocoanut-shell, his legs
spread abroad in the moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from
time to time. His hosts were most polite; for the cultivator's wife
had told them of his vision of the Red Bull and of his probable
descent from another world. Moreover, the lama was a great and
venerable curiosity. The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut
Brahmin, dropped in later, and naturally started a theological
argument to impress the family. By creed, of course, they were all
on their priest's side, but the lama was the guest and the novelty.
His gentle kindliness, and his impressive Chinese quotations, that
sounded like spells, delighted them hugely; and in this sympathetic,
simple air he expanded like the Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking of
his life in the great hills of Suchzen, before, as he said, "I rose up
to seek enlightenment."

  Then it came out that in those worldly days he had been a
master-hand at casting horoscopes and nativities; and the family
priest led him on to describe his methods; each giving the planets
names that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the
big stars sailed across the dark. The children of the house tugged
unrebuked at his rosary, and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids
looking at women as he talked of euduring snows, landslips, blocked
passes, the remote cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise,
and that wonderful upland road that leads at last into Great China
itself.

  "How thinkest thou of this one?" said the cultivator aside to the
priest.

  "A holy man- a holy man indeed. His Gods are not the Gods, but his
feet are upon the Way," was the answer. "And his methods of
nativities, though that is beyond thee, are wise and sure."

  "Tell me," said Kim lazily, "whether I find my Red Bull on a green
field, as was promised me."

  "What knowledge hast thou of thy birth-hour?" the priest asked,
swelling with importance.

  "Between first and second cockcrow of the first night in May."

  "Of what year?"

  "I do not know; but upon the hour that I cried first fell the
great earthquake in Srinagur which is in Kashmir." This Kim had from
the woman who took care of him, and she again from Kimball O'Hara. The
earthquake had been felt in India, and for long stood a leading date
in the Punjab.

  "Ai!" said a woman excitedly. This seemed to make Kim's supernatural
origin more certain. "Was not such an one's daughter born then- "

  "And her mother bore her husband four sons in four years- all likely
boys," cried the cultivator's wife, sitting outside the circle in
the shadow.

  "None reared in the knowledge," said the family priest, "forget
how the planets stood in their Houses upon that night." He began to
draw in the dust of the courtyard. "At least thou hast good claim to a
half of the House of the Bull. How runs thy prophecy?"

  "Upon a day," said Kim, delighted at the sensation he was
creating, "I shall be made great by means of a Red Bull on a green
field, but first there will enter two men making all things ready."

  "Yes: thus ever at the opening of a vision. A thick darkness that
clears slowly; anon one enters with a broom making ready the place.
Then begins the Sight. Two men- thou sayest? Ay, ay. The Sun,
leaving the House of the Bull, enters that of the Twins. Hence the two
men of the prophecy. Let us now consider. Fetch me a twig, little
one."

  He knitted his brows, scratched, smoothed out, and scratched again
in the dust mysterious signs- to the wonder of all save the lama, who,
with fine instinct, forbore to interfere.

  At the end of half an hour he tossed the twig from him with a grunt.

  "Hm. Thus say the stars. Within three days come the two men to
make all things ready. After them follows the Bull; but the sign
over against him is the sign of War and armed men."

  "There was indeed a man of the Loodhiana Sikhs in the carriage
from Lahore," said the cultivator's wife hopefully.

  "Tck! Armed men- many hundreds. What concern hast thou with war?"
said the priest to Kim. "Thine is a red and an angry sign of War to be
loosed very soon."

  "None- none," said the lama earnestly. "We seek only peace and our
River."

  Kim smiled, remembering what he had overheard in the
dressing-room. Decidedly he was a favourite of the stars.

  The priest brushed his foot over the rude horoscope. "More than this
I cannot see. In three days comes the Bull to thee, boy."

  "And my River, my River," pleaded the lama. I had hoped his Bull
would lead us both to the River."

  "Alas, for that wondrous River, my brother," the priest replied.
"Such things are not common."

  Next morning, though they were pressed to stay, the lama insisted on
departure. They gave Kim a large bundle of good food and nearly
three annas in copper money for the needs of the road, and with many
blessings watched the two go southward in the dawn.

  "Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from the
Wheel of Things," said the lama.

  "Nay, then would only evil people be left on the earth, and who
would give us meat and shelter?" quoth Kim, stepping merrily under his
burden.

  "Yonder is a small stream. Let us look," said the lama, and he led
from the white road across the fields; walking into a very
hornets'-nest of pariah dogs.

                                  3

                "Yea, voice of every Soul that clung

                 To Life that strove from rung to rung

                 When Devadatta's rule was young,

                   The warm wind brings Kamakura."

  Behind them an angry farmer brandished a bamboo pole. He was a
market-gardener, Arain by caste, growing vegetables and flowers for
Umballa city, and well Kim knew the breed.

  "Such an one," said the lama, disregarding the dogs, "is impolite to
strangers, intemperate of speech and uncharitable. Be warned by his
demeanour, my disciple."

  "Ho, shameless beggars!" shouted the farmer. "Begone! Get hence!"

  "We go," the lama returned, with quiet dignity. "We go from these
unblessed fields."

  "Ah," said Kim, sucking in his breath. "If the next crop fails, thou
canst only blame thy own tongue."

  The man shuffled uneasily in his slippers. "The land is full of
beggars," he began, half apologetically.

  "And by what sign didst thou know that we would beg from thee, O
Mali?" said Kim tartly, using the name that a market-gardener least
likes. "All we sought was to look at that river beyond the field
there."

  "River, forsooth!" the man snorted. "What city do ye hail from not
to know a canal-cut? It runs as straight as an arrow, and I pay for
the water as though it were molten silver. There is a branch of a
river beyond. But if ye need water I can give that- and milk."

  "Nay, we will go to the river," said the lama, striding out.

  "Milk and a meal," the man stammered, as he looked at the strange
tall figure. "I- I would not draw evil upon myself- or my crops; but
beggars are so many in these hard days."

  "Take notice," the lama turned to Kim. "He was led to speak
harshly by the Red Mist of anger. That clearing from his eyes, he
becomes courteous and of an affable heart. May his fields be
blessed. Beware not to judge men too hastily, O farmer."

  "I have met holy ones who would have cursed thee from hearthstone to
byre," said Kim to the abashed man. "Is he not wise and holy? I am his
disciple."

  He cocked his nose in the air loftily and stepped across the
narrow field-borders with great dignity.

  "There is no pride," said the lama, after a pause, "there is no
pride among such as follow the Middle Way."

  "But thou hast said he was low caste and discourteous."

  "Low caste I did not say, for how can that be which is not?
Afterwards he amended his discourtesy, and I forgot the offense.
Moreover, he is as we are, bound upon the Wheel of Things; but he does
not tread the way of deliverance." He halted at a little runlet
among the fields, and considered the hoof-pitted bank.

  "Now, how wilt thou know thy River?" said Kim, squatting in the
shade of some tall sugar-cane.

  "When I find it, an enlightenment will surely be given. This, I
feel, is not the place. O littlest among the waters, if only thou
couldst tell me where runs my River! But be thou blessed to make the
fields bear!"

  "Look! Look!" Kim sprang to his side and dragged him back. A
yellow and brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the
bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still- a big
cobra with fixed, lidless eyes.

  "I have no stick- I have no stick," said Kim. "I will get me one and
break his back."

  "Why? He is upon the Wheel as we are- a life ascending or
descending- very far from deliverance. Great evil must the soul have
done that is cast into this shape."

  "I hate all snakes," said Kim. No native training can quench the
white man's horror of the Serpent.

  "Let him live out his life." The coiled thing hissed and half opened
its hood. "May thy release come soon, brother," the lama continued
placidly. "Hast thou knowledge, by chance, of my River?"

  "Never have I seen such a man as thou art," Kim whispered,
overwhelmed. "Do the very snakes understand thy talk?"

  "Who knows?" He passed within a foot of the cobra's poised head.
It flattened itself among the dusty coils.

  "Come thou!" he called over his shoulder.

  "Not I," said Kim. "I go round."

  "Come. He does no hurt."

  Kim hesitated for a moment. The lama backed his order by some droned
Chinese quotation which Kim took for a charm. He obeyed and bounded
across the rivulet, and the snake, indeed, made no sign.

  "Never have I seen such a man." Kim wiped the sweat from his
forehead. "And now, whither go we?"

  "That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger- far from my
own place. But that the rel-carriage fills my head with noises of
devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now.... Yet by so going we may
miss the River. Let us find another river."

  Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year-
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and
nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse
of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the
lama replying to the vollied questions with an unswerving
simplicity. They sought a River- a River of miraculous healing. Had
any one knowledge of such a stream? Sometimes men laughed, but more
often heard the story out to the end and offered them a place in the
shade, a drink of milk, and a meal. The women were always kind, and
the little children as children are the world over, alternately shy
and venturesome. Evening found them at rest under the village tree
of a mud-walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the
cattle came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the
day's last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens
round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the staple
crops.

  He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining
strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set warm
cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the evening
ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for the
village priest.

  Kim told the older children tales of the size and beauty of
Lahore, of railway travel, and such-like city things, while the men
talked, slowly as their cattle chew the cud.

  "I cannot fathom it," said the headman at last to the priest. "How
readest thou this talk?" The lama, his tale told, was silently telling
his beads.

  "He is a Seeker," the priest answered. "The land is full of such.
Remember him who came only last month- the faquir with the tortoise?"

  "Ay, but that man had right and reason, for Krishna Himself appeared
in a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-pyre if he
journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no god who is within my
knowledge."

  "Peace, he is old: he comes from far off, and he is mad," the
smooth-shaven priest replied. "Hear me." He turned to the lama. "Three
kos (six miles) to the westward runs the great road to Calcutta."

  "But I would go to Benares- to Benares."

  "And to Benares also. It crosses all streams on this side of Hind.
Now my word to thee, Holy One, is rest here till tomorrow. Then take
the road" (it was the Grand Trunk Road he meant) "and test each stream
that it overpasses; for, as I understand the virtue of thy River
lies neither in one pool nor place, but throughout its length. Then,
if thy Gods will, be assured that thou wilt come upon thy freedom."

  "That is well said." The lama was much impressed by the plan. "We
will begin to-morrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such
a near road." A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the
sentence. Even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an
evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple, eager face and
doubt him long.

  "Seest thou my chela?" he said, diving into his snuff-gourd with
an important sniff. It was his duty to repay courtesy with courtesy.

  "I see- and hear." The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting
to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns on a fire.

  "He also has a Search of his own. No river, but a Bull. Yea, a Red
Bull on a green field will some day raise him to honour. He is, I
think, not altogether of this world. He was sent of a sudden to aid me
in this search, and his name is Friend of all the World."

  The priest smiled. "Ho there, Friend of all the World," he cried
across the sharp-smelling smoke, "what art thou?"

  "This Holy One's disciple," said Kim.

  "He says thou art a but" (a spirit).

  "Can buts eat?" said Kim, with a twinkle. "For I am hungry."

  "It is no jest," cried the lama. "A certain astrologer of that
city whose name I have forgotten-"

  "That is no more than the city of Umballa where we slept last
night," Kim whispered to the priest.

  "Ay, Umballa was it? He cast a horoscope and declared that my
chela should find his desire within two days. But what said he of
the meaning of the stars, Friend of all the World?"

  Kim cleared his throat and looked around at the village graybeards.

  "The meaning of my Star is War," he replied pompously.

  Somebody laughed at the little tattered figure strutting on the
brickwork plinth under the great tree. Where a native would have
lain down, Kim's white blood set him upon his feet.

  "Ay, War," he answered.

  "That is a sure prophecy," rumbled a deep voice. "For there is
always war along the Border- as I know."

  It was an old, withered man, who had served the Government in the
days of the Mutiny as a native officer in a newly raised cavalry
regiment. The Government had given him a good holding in the
village, and though the demands of his sons, now gray-bearded officers
on their own account, had impoverished him, he was still a person of
consequence. English officials- Deputy Commissioners even- turned
aside from the main road to visit him, and on those occasions he
dressed himself in the uniform of ancient days, and stood up like a
ramrod.

  "But this shall be a great war- a war of eight thousand," Kim's
voice shrilled across the quick-gathering crowd, astonishing himself.

  "Redcoats or our own regiments?" the old man snapped, as though he
were asking an equal. His tone made men respect Kim.

  "Redcoats," said Kim at a venture. "Redcoats and guns."

  "But- but the astrologer said no word of this," cried the lama,
snuffing prodigiously in his excitement.

  "But I know. The word has come to me, who am this Holy One's
disciple. There will rise a war- a war of eight thousand redcoats.
From Pindi and Peshawur they will be drawn. This is sure."

  "The boy has heard bazar-talk," said the priest.

  "But he was always by my side," said the lama. How should he know? I
did not know."

  "He will make a clever juggler when the old man is dead," muttered
the priest to the headman. "What new trick is this?"

  "A sign. Give me a sign," thundered the old soldier suddenly. "If
there were war my sons would have told me."

  "When all is ready, thy sons, doubt not, will be told. But it is a
long road from thy sons to the man in whose hands these things lie."
Kim warmed to the game, for it reminded him of experiences in the
letter-carrying line, when, for the sake of a few pice, he pretended
to know more than he knew. But now he was playing for larger things-
the sheer excitement and the sense of power. He drew a new breath
and went on.

  "Old man, give me a sign. Do underlings order the goings of eight
thousand redcoats- with guns?"

  "No." Still the old man answered as though Kim were an equal.

  "Dost thou know who He is then that gives the order?"

  "I have seen Him."

  "To know again?"

  "I have known Him since he was a lieutenant in the topkhana" (the
Artillery).

  "A tall man. A tall man with black hair, walking thus?" Kim took a
few paces in a stiff, wooden style.

  "Ay. But that anyone may have seen." The crowd were breathless-still
through all this talk.

  "That is true," said Kim. "But I will say more. Look now. First
the great man walks thus. Then He thinks thus. (Kim drew a
forefinger over his forehead and downwards till it came to rest by the
angle of the jaw.) Anon He twitches his fingers thus. Anon He
thrusts his hat under his left armpit." Kim illustrated the motion and
stood like a stork.

  The old man groaned, inarticulate with amazement; and the crowd
shivered.

  "So- so- so. But what does He when He is about to give an order?"

  "He rubs the skin at the back of his neck- thus. Then falls one
finger on the table and he makes a small sniffing noise through his
nose. Then He speaks, saying: 'Loose such and such a regiment. Call
out such guns.'"

  The old man rose stiffly and saluted.

  "'For'"- Kim translated into the vernacular the clinching
sentences he had heard in the dressing-room at Umballa- "'For,' says
He, 'we should have done this long ago. It is not war- it is a
chastisement. Snff!'"

  "Enough. I believe. I have seen Him thus in the smoke of battles.
Seen and heard. It is He!"

  "I saw no smoke"- Kim's voice shifted to the rapt sing-song of the
wayside fortune-teller. "I saw this in darkness. First came a man to
make things clear. Then came horsemen. Then came He, standing in a
ring of light. The rest followed as I have said. Old man, have I
spoken truth?"

  "It is He. Past all doubt it is He."

  The crowd drew a long, quavering breath, staring alternately at
the old man, still at attention, and ragged Kim against the purple
twilight.

  "Said I not- said I not he was from the other world?" cried the lama
proudly. "He is the Friend of all the World. He is the Friend of the
Stars!"

  "At least it does not concern us," a man cried."O thou young
soothsayer, if the gift abides with thee at all seasons, I have a
red-spotted cow. She may be sister to thy Bull for aught I know- "

  "Or I care," said Kim. "My Stars do not concern themselves with
thy cattle."

  "Nay, but she is very sick," a woman struck in. "My man is a
buffalo, or he would have chosen his words better. Tell me if she
recover?"

  Had Kim been at all an ordinary boy, he would have carried on the
play; but one does not know Lahore city, and least of all the
faquirs by the Taksali Gate, for thirteen years without also knowing
human nature.

  The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly- a dry and
blighting smile.

  "Is there no priest then in the village? I thought I had seen a
great one even now," cried Kim.

  "Ay- but- " the woman began.

  "But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful
of thanks." The shot told: they were notoriously the closest-fisted
couple in the village. "It is not well to cheat the temples. Give a
young calf to thy own priest, and, unless thy gods are angry past
recall, she will give milk within a month."

  "A master-beggar art thou," purred the priest approvingly. "Not
the cunning of forty years could have done better. Surely thou hast
made the old man rich?"

  "A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms," Kim
retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious- "does one
grow rich on that? And, as thou canst see, he is mad. But it serves me
while I learn the road at least."

  He knew what the faquirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they
talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their
lewd disciples.

  "Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends? It may be
treasure."

  "He is mad- many times mad. There is nothing else."

  Here the old soldier hobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his
hospitality for the night. The priest recommended him to do so, but
insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the
temple- at which the lama smiled guilelessly. Kim glanced from one
face to the other, and drew his own conclusions.

  "Where is the money?" he whispered, beckoning the old man off into
the darkness.

  "In my bosom. Where else?"

  "Give it me. Quietly and swiftly give it me."

  "But why? Here is no ticket to buy."

  "Am I thy chela, or am I not? Do I not safeguard thy old feet
about the ways? Give me the money and at dawn I will return it." He
slipped his hand above the lama's girdle and brought away the purse.

  "Be it so- be it so." The old man nodded his head. "This is a
great and terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive in
it."

  Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was
quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the
old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his
dry knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty years in
their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.

  "Certainly the air of this country is good," said the lama. "I sleep
lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad
day. Even now I am heavy."

  "Drink a draught of hot milk," said Kim, who had carried not a few
such remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance. "It is time to
take the road again."

  "The long road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind," said the
lama gaily. "Let us go. But how thinkest thou, chela, to recompense
these people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness?
Truly they are but-parast, but in other lives, may be, they will
receive enlightenment. A rupee to the temple? The thing within is no
more than stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must
acknowledge when and where it is good."

  "Holy One, hast thou ever taken the road alone?" Kim looked up
sharply, like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.

  "Surely, child: from Kulu to Pathankot- from Kulu, where my first
chela died. When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men
were well-disposed throughout all the Hills."

  "It is otherwise in Hind," said Kim drily. "Their Gods are
many-armed and malignant. Let them alone."

  "I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World-
thou and thy yellow man." The old soldier ambled up the village
street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a gaunt, scissor-hocked pony.
"Last night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried
heart, and it was as a blessing to me. Truly there is war abroad in
the air. I smell it. See! I have brought my sword."

  He sat long-legged on the little beast, with his big sword at his
side- hand dropped on the pommel- staring fiercely over the flat lands
towards the north. "Tell me again how He showed in thy vision. Come up
and sit behind me. The beast will carry two."

  "I am this Holy One's disciple," said Kim, as they cleared the
village-gate. The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but
the priest's farewell was cold and distant. He had wasted some opium
on a man who carried no money.

  "That is well spoken. I am not much used to holy men, but respect is
always good. There is no respect in these days- not even when a
Commissioner Sahib comes to see me. But why should one whose Star
leads him to war follow a holy man?"

  "But he is a holy man," said Kim earnestly. "In truth, and in talk
and in act, holy. He is not like the others. I have never seen such an
one. We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars."

  "Thou art not, that I can see; but I do not know that other. He
marches well, though."

  The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long,
easy, camel-like strides. He was deep in meditation, mechanically
clicking his rosary.

  They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the
flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the
snow-capped Himalayas faint to the eastward. All India was at work
in the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of
ploughmen behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows. Even
the pony felt the good influence and almost broke into a trot as Kim
laid a hand on the stirrup-leather.

  "It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine," said
the lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.

  The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first
time was aware of him.

  "Seekest thou the River also?" said he, turning.

  "The day is new," was the reply. "What need of a river save to water
at before sundown? I come to show thee a short lane to the Big Road."

  "That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will; but why
the sword?"

  The old soldier looked as abashed as a child interrupted in his game
of make-believe.

  "The sword," he said, fumbling it." Oh, that was a fancy of mine- an
old man's fancy. Truly the police orders are that no man must bear
weapons throughout Hind, but"- he cheered up and slapped the hilt-
"all the constabeels hereabout know me."

  "It is not a good fancy," said the lama. "What profit to kill men?"

  "Very little- as I know; but if evil men were not now and then slain
it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers. I do not speak
without knowledge who have seen the land from Delhi south awash with
blood."

  "What madness was that, then?"

  "The Gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate
into all the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was
the first evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands.
But they chose to kill the Sahibs' wives and children. Then came the
Sahibs from over the sea and called them to most strict account."

  "Some such rumour, I believe, reached me once long ago. They
called it the Black Year, as I remember."

  "What manner of life hast thou led, not to know The Year? A rumour
indeed! All earth knew, and trembled."

  "Our earth never shook but once- upon the day that the Excellent One
received Enlightenment."

  "Umph! I saw Delhi shake at least; and Delhi is the navel of the
world."

  "So they turned against women and children? That was a bad deed, for
which the punishment cannot be avoided."

  "Many strove to do so, but with very small profit. I was then in a
regiment of cavalry. It broke. Of six hundred and eighty sabres
stood fast to their salt- how many think you? Three. Of whom I was
one."

  "The greater merit."

  "Merit! We did not consider it merit in those days. My people, my
friends, my brothers fell from me. They said: 'The time of the English
is accomplished. Let each strike out a little holding for himself.'
But I had talked with the men of Sobraon, of Chillianwallah, of
Moodkee and Ferozeshah. I said: 'Abide a little and the wind turns.
There is no blessing in this work.' those days I rode seventy miles
with an English mem-sahib and her babe on my saddle-bow. (Wow! That
was a horse fit for a man!) I placed them in safety, and back came I
to my officer- the one that was not killed of our five. 'Give me
work,' said I, 'for I am an outcast among my own kin, and my
cousin's blood is wet on my sabre.' 'Be content.' said he. 'There is
great work forward. When this madness is over there is a recompense.'"

  "Ay, there is a recompense when the madness is over, surely?" the
lama muttered half to himself.

  "They did not hang medals in those days on all who by accident had
heard a gun fired. No! In nineteen pitched battles was I; in
six-and-forty skirmishes of horse; and in small affairs without
number. Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of
an Order, for my captains who are now generals, remembered me when the
Kaiser-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign, and all the
land rejoiced. They said: 'Give him the order of Berittish India.' I
carry it upon my neck now. I have also my jaghir (holding) from the
hands of the State- a free gift to me and mine. The men of the old
days- they are now Commissioners- come riding to me through the crops-
high upon horses so that all the village sees- and we talk out the old
skirmishes, one dead man's name leading to another."

  "And after?" said the lama.

  "Oh, afterwards they go away, but not before my village has seen."

  "And at the last what wilt thou do?"

  "At the last I shall die."

  "And after?"

  "Let the Gods order it. I have never pestered Them with prayers: I
do not think they will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my
long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with
complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently
sent for in haste, as our colonel used to send for slack-jawed
down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the
Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can
drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no
less than three- ressaldar-majors all- in the regiments."

  "And they likewise, bound upon the Wheel, go forth from life to
life- from despair to despair," said the lama below his breath,
"hot, uneasy, snatching."

  Ay," the old soldier chuckled. "Three ressaldar-majors in three
regiments. Gamblers a little, but so am I. They must be well
mounted; and one cannot take the horses as in the old days one took
women. Well, well, my holding can pay for all. How thinkest thou? It
is a well-watered strip, but my men cheat me. I do not know how to ask
save at the lance's point. Ugh! I grow angry and I curse them, and
they feign penitence, but behind my back I know they call me a
toothless old ape."

  "Hast thou never desired any other thing?"

  "Yes- yes- a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging
knee once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that
makes a man. Oh, the old days- the good days of my strength!"

  "That strength is weakness."

  "It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it
otherwise," the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into
the pony's lean flank.

  "But I know a River of great healing."

  "I have drunk Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me was
a flux, and no sort of strength."

  "It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of
sin. Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not know
thy life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and courteous.
Thou hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it was hard to
give, in that Black Year of which I now remember other tales. Enter
now upon the Middle Way, which is the path to Freedom. Hear the Most
Excellent Law, and do not follow dreams."

  "Speak then, old man," the soldier smiled, half saluting. "We be all
babblers at our age."

  The lama squatted under the shade of a mango tree, whose shadow
played checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony;
and Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the crotch
of the twisted roots.

  There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of
doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields. Slowly and
impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes the old soldier
slid from his pony, to hear better as he said, and sat with the
reins round his wrist. The lama's voice faltered- the periods
lengthened. Kim was busy watching a gray squirrel. When the little
scolding bunch of fur, close pressed to the branch, disappeared,
preacher and audience were fast asleep, the old officer's strong-cut
head pillowed on his arm, the lama's thrown back against the tree
bole, where it showed like yellow ivory. A naked child toddled up,
stared, and, moved by some quick impulse of reverence made a solemn
little obeisance before the lama- only the child was so short and
fat that it toppled over sideways, and Kim laughed at the sprawling,
chubby legs. The child, seared and indignant, yelled aloud.

  "Hai! Hai!" said the soldier leaping to his feet. "What is it?
What orders?... It is... a child! I dreamed it was an alarm. Little
one- little one- do not cry. Have I slept? That was discourteous
indeed!"

  "I fear! I am afraid!" roared the child.

  "What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever
make a soldier, Princeling?"

  The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child,
clicked his rosary.

  "What is that?" said the child, stopping a yell midway. "I have
never seen such things. Give them me."

  "Aha," said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the
grass:

       "This is a handful of cardamoms,

          This is a lump of ghi.

        This is millet and chillies and rice,

          A supper for thee and me!"

  The child shrieked with joy, and snatched at the dark, glancing
beads.

  "Oho!" said the old soldier. "Whence had thou that song, despiser of
this world?"

  "I learned it in Pathankot- sitting on a door-step," said the lama
shyly. "It is good to be kind to babes."

  "As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that
marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light,
stumbling-blocks upon the way. Do children drop from heaven in thy
country? Is it the Way to sing them songs?"

  "No man is all perfect," said the lama gravely, recoiling the
rosary. "Run now to thy mother, little one."

  "Hear him!" said the soldier to Kim. "He is ashamed for that he
has made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in
thee, my brother. Hai, child!" He threw it a pice. "Sweetmeats are
always sweet." And as the little figure capered away into the
sunshine: "They grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I
slept in the midst of thy preaching. Forgive me."

  "We be two old men," said the lama." The fault is mine. I listened
to thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the
next."

  "Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And
that song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the
song of Nikal Seyn before Delhi- the old song."

  And they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's
high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn
wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn (Nicholson)- the song that
men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama
listened with deep interest.

  "Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead- he died before Delhi! Lances of North take
vengeance for Nikal Seyn." He quavered it out to the end, marking
the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony's rump.

  "And now we come to the Big Road," said he, after receiving the
compliments of Kim; for the lama was markedly silent. "It is long
since I have ridden this way, but thy boy's talk stirred me. See, Holy
One- the Great Road which is the backbone of all Hind. For the most
part it is shaded, as here, with four lines of trees; the middle road-
all hard- takes the quick traffic. In the days before rail-carriages
the Sahibs travelled up and down here in hundreds. Now there are
only country-carts and such like. Left and right is the rougher road
for the heavy carts- grain and cotton and timber, bhoosa, lime and
hides. A man goes in safety here- for at every few kos is a
police-station. The police are thieves and extortioners (I myself
would patrol it with cavalry- young recruits under a strong
captain), but at least they do not suffer any rivals. All castes and
kinds of men move here. Look! Brahmins and chumars, bankers and
tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims and potters- all the world
going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn
like a log after a flood."

  And truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs
straight, bearing without crowding India's traffic for fifteen hundred
miles- such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world.
They looked at the green-arched, shade-flecked length of it, the white
breadth speckled with slow-pacing folk; and the two-roomed
police-station opposite.

  "Who bears arms against the law?" a constable called out laughingly,
as he caught sight of the soldier's sword. "Are not the police
enough to destroy evil-doers?"

  "It was because of the police I bought it," was the answer. "Does
all go well in Hind?"

  "Ressaldar Sahib, all goes well."

  "I am like an old tortoise, look you, who puts his head out from the
bank and draws it in again. Ay, this is the road of Hindustan. All men
come by this way...."

  "Son of a swine, is the soft part of the road meant for thee to
scratch thy back upon? Father of all the daughters of shame and
husband of ten thousand virtueless ones, thy mother was devoted to a
devil, being led thereto by her mother; thy aunts have never had a
nose for seven generations! Thy sister- What owl's folly told thee
to draw thy carts across the road? A broken wheel? Then take a
broken head and put the two together at leisure!"

  The voice and a venomous whip-cracking came out of a pillar of
dust fifty yards away, where a cart had broken down. A thin, high
Kattiwar mare, with eyes and nostrils aflame, rocketed out of the jam,
snorting and wincing as her rider bent her across the road in chase of
a shouting man. He was tall and gray-bearded, sitting the almost mad
beast as a piece of her, and scientifically lashing his victim between
plunges.

  The old man's face lit with pride. "My child!" said he briefly,
and strove to rein the pony's neck to a fitting arch.

  "Am I to be beaten before the police?" cried the carter. "Justice! I
will have Justice- "

  "Am I to be blocked by a shouting ape who upsets ten thousand
sacks under a young horse's nose? That is the way to ruin a mare."

  "He speaks truth. He speaks truth. But she follows her man close,"
said the old man. The carter ran under the wheels of his cart and
thence threatened all sorts of vengeance.

  "They are strong men, thy sons," said the policeman serenely,
picking his teeth.

  The horseman delivered one last vicious cut with his whip and came
on at a canter.

  "My father!" He reined back ten yards and dismounted.

  The old man was off his pony in an instant, and they embraced as
do father and son in the East.

                                   4

                 Good Luck, she is never a lady,

                 But the cursedest quean alive.

                 Tricksy, wincing, and jady-

                 Kittle to lead or drive.

                 Greet her- she hailing a stranger!

                 Meet her- she's busking to leave!

                 Let her alone for a shrew to the bone

                 And the hussy comes plucking your sleeve!

                   Largesse! Largesse, O Fortune!

                   Give or hold at your will

                   If I've no care for Fortune,

                   Fortune must follow me still!

                                    " THE  WISHING  CAPS "

  Then, lowering their voices, they spoke together. Kim came to rest
under a tree, but the lama tugged impatiently at his elbow.

  "Let us go on. The River is not here."

  "Hai mai? Have we not walked enough for a little? Our River will not
run away. Patience, and he will give us a dole."

  "That," said the old soldier suddenly, "is the Friend of the
Stars. He brought me the news yesterday. Having seen the very man
Himself, in a vision, giving orders for the war."

  "Hm!" said his son, all deep in his broad chest. "He came by a
bazar-rumour and made profit of it."

  His father laughed. "At least he did not ride to me begging for a
new charger and the Gods know how many rupees. Are thy brothers'
regiments also under orders?"

  "I do not know. I took leave and came swiftly to thee in case- "

  "In case they ran before thee to beg. O gamblers and spendthrifts
all! But thou hast never yet ridden in a charge. A good horse is
needed there, truly. A good follower and a good pony also for the
marching. Let us see- let us see." He thrummed on the pommel.

  "This is no place to cast thy accounts in, my father. Let us go to
thy house."

  "At least pay the boy then: I have no pice with me, and he brought
auspicious news. Ho! Friend of all the World, a war is toward as
thou hast said."

  "Nay, as I know, the war," returned Kim composedly.

  "Eh?" said the lama, fingering his beads, all eager for the road.

  "My master does not trouble the Stars for hire. We brought the news-
bear witness we brought the news, and now we go." Kim half-crooked his
hand at his side.

  The son tossed a silver coin through the sunlight, grumbling
something about beggars and jugglers. It was a four-anna piece, and
would feed them well for some days. The lama, seeing the flash of
the metal, droned a blessing.

  "Go thy way, Friend of all the World," piped the old soldier,
wheeling his scrawny mount. "For once in all my days I have met a true
prophet- who was not in the Army."

  Father and son swung round together: the old man sitting as erect as
the younger.

  A Punjabi constable in yellow linen trousers slouched across the
road. He had seen the money pass.

  "Halt!" he cried in impressive English. "Know ye not that there is a
takkus of two annas a head, which is four annas, on those who enter
the road from this side-road. It is the order of the Sirkar, and the
money is spent for the planting of trees and the beautification of the
ways."

  "And the bellies of the police," said Kim, skipping out of arm's
reach. "Consider for a while, man with a mud head. Think you we came
from the nearest pond like the frog, thy father-in-law. Hast thou ever
heard the name of thy brother?"

  "And who was he? Leave the boy alone," cried a senior constable,
immensely delighted, as he squatted down to smoke his pipe in the
veranda.

  "He took a label from a bottle of belaitee-pani (soda-water), and,
aff