Kim

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. O 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 te-rain 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 te-rain,' said the banker, with a

patronizing 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 Ludhiana 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 the 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 Home-stead.' 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 maybe we have over-passed 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 Such-zen. 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