Kim

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-work iron pincers, 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 brush-pen 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 awhile, 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 milkwoman'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 bazaar 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 far-away 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 Brahmini 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 fried 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 beggar-man.'

'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, bhisti!' he called to the water-carrier, sluicing

the crotons by the Museum. 'Give water here. We men are thirsty.'

'We men!' said the bhisti, 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