APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/kipling/kim/CHAP_8_15

Text File | 1994-08-31 | 315.5 KB | 6,761 lines

                                8


            "Something I owe to the soil that grew-
               More to the life that fed-
             But most to Allah Who gave me two
               Separate sides to my head.

             I would go without shirts or shoes,
               Friends, tobacco or bread
             Sooner than for an instant lose
               Either side of my head."


"Then in God's Name take blue for red," said Mahbub, alluding to the
Hindu colour of Kim's disreputable turban.

Kim countered with the old proverb, "I will change my faith and my
bedding, but thou must pay for it."

The dealer laughed till he nearly fell from his horse. At a shop
on the outskirts of the city the change was made, and Kim stood up,
externally at least, a Mohammedan.

Mahbub hired a room over against the railway station, sent for a
cooked meal of the finest with almond-curd sweetmeats (balushai we
call it) and fine-chopped Lucknow tobacco.

"This is better than some other meat that I ate with the Sikh," said
Kim, grinning as he squatted, "and assuredly they give no such
victuals at my madrissah."

"I have a desire to hear of that same madrissah." Mahbub stuffed
himself with great boluses of spiced mutton fried in fat with
cabbage and golden-brown onions. "But tell me first, altogether and
truthfully, the manner of thy escape. For, O Friend of all the World"-
he loosed his cracking belt- "I do not think it is often that a
Sahib and the son of a Sahib runs away from there."

"How should they? They do not know the land. It was nothing," said
Kim, and began his tale. When he came to the disguisement and the
interview with the girl in the bazar, Mahbub Ali's gravity went from
him. He laughed aloud and beat his hand on his thigh.

"Shabash! Shabash! Oh, well done, little one! What will the healer
of turquoises say to this? Now, slowly, let us hear what befell
afterwards- step by step, omitting nothing."

Step by step then, Kim told his adventures between coughs as the
full-flavoured tobacco caught his lungs.

"I said," growled Mahbub Ali to himself, "I said it was the pony
breaking out to play polo. The fruit is ripe already- except that he
must learn his distances and his pacings, and his rods and his
compasses. Listen now. I have turned aside the Colonel's whip from thy
skin, and that is no small service."

"True." Kim puffed serenely. "That is all true."

"But it is not to be thought that this running out and in is any way
good."

"It was my holiday, Hajji. I was a slave for many weeks. Why
should I not run away when the school was shut? Look, too, how I,
living upon my friends or working for my bread, as I did with the
Sikh, have saved the Colonel Sahib a great expense."

Mahbub's lips twitched under his well-pruned Mohammedan moustache.

"What are a few rupees"- the Pathan threw out his open hand
carelessly- "to the Colonel Sahib? He spends them for a purpose, not
in any way for love of thee."

"That," said Kim slowly, "I knew a very long time ago."

"Who told?"

"The Colonel Sahib himself. Not in those many words, but plainly
enough for one who is not altogether a mud-head. Yea, he told me in
the te-rain when we went down to Lucknow."

"Be it so. Then I will tell thee more, Friend of all the World,
though in the telling I lend thee my head."

"It was forfeit to me," said Kim, with deep relish, "in Umballa,
when thou didst pick me up on the horse after the drummer-boy beat
me."

"Speak a little plainer. All the world may tell lies save thou and
I. For equally is thy life forfeit to me if I chose to raise my finger
here."

"And this is known to me also," said Kim, readjusting the live
charcoal-ball on the weed. "It is a very sure tie between us. Indeed
thy hold is surer even than mine; for who would miss a boy beaten to
death, or, it may be, thrown into a well by the roadside? Many
people here and in Simla and across the passes behind the Hills would,
on the other hand, say: 'What has come to Mahbub Ali,' if he were
found dead among his horses. Surely too the Colonel Sahib would make
inquiries. But again"- Kim's face puckered with cunning- "he would not
make overlong inquiry, lest people should ask: 'What has this
Colonel Sahib to do with that horse-dealer?' But I- if I lived-"

"As thou wouldst surely die-"

"It may be; but I say, if I lived, I, and I alone, would know that
one had come by night, as a common thief perhaps, to Mahbub Ali's
bulkhead in the serai, and there had slain him, either before or after
that thief had made a full search into his saddle-bags and between the
soles of his slippers. Is that news to tell to the Colonel, or would
he say to me- (I have not forgotten when he sent me back for a
cigar-case that he had not left behind him)- 'What is Mahbub Ali to
me?'"

Up went a gout of heavy smoke. There was a long pause; then Mahbub
Ali spoke in admiration: "And with these things on thy mind, dost thou
lie down and rise again among all the Sahibs' little sons at the
madrissah and meekly take instruction from thy teachers?"

"It is an order," said Kim blandly. "Who am I to dispute an order?"

"A most finished son of Eblis," said Mahbub Ali. "But what is this
tale of the thief and the search?"

"That which I saw," said Kim, "the night that my lama and I lay next
thy place in the Kashmir Serai. The door was left unlocked, which I
think is not thy custom, Mahbub. He came in as one assured that thou
wouldst not soon return. My eye was against a knot-hole in the
plank. He searched as it were for something- not a rug, not
stirrups, nor a bridle, nor brass pots- something little and most
carefully hid. Else why did he prick with an iron between the soles of
thy slippers?"

"Ha!" Mahbub Ali smiled gently. "And seeing these things, what
tale didst thou fashion to thyself, Well of the Truth?"

"None. I put my hand upon my amulet, which lies always next to my
skin, and, remembering the pedigree of a white stallion that I had
bitten out of a piece of Mussalmani bread, I went away to Umballa
perceiving that a heavy trust was laid upon me. At that hour, had I
chosen, thy head was forfeit. It needed only to say to that man, 'I
have here a paper concerning a horse which I cannot read.' And
then?" Kim peered at Mahbub under his eyebrows.

"Then thou wouldst have drunk water twice- perhaps thrice,
afterwards. I do not think more than thrice," said Mahbub simply.

"It is true. I thought of that a little, but most I thought that I
loved thee, Mahbub. Therefore I went to Umballa, as thou knowest,
but (and this thou dost not know) I lay hid in the garden-grass to see
what Colonel Creighton Sahib might do upon reading the white
stallion's pedigree."

"And what did he?" for Kim had bitten off the conversation.

"Dost thou give news for love, or dost thou sell it?" Kim asked.

"I sell and- I buy." Mahbub took a four-anna piece out of his belt
and held it up.

"Eight!" said Kim, mechanically following the huckster instinct of
the East.

Mahbub laughed, and put away the coin. "It is too easy to deal in
that market, Friend of all the World. Tell me for love. Our lives
lie in each other's hand."

"Very good. I saw the Jang-i-Lat Sahib (the Commander-in-Chief) come
to a big dinner. I saw him in Creighton Sahib's office. I saw the
two read the white stallion's pedigree. I heard the very orders
given for the opening of a great war."

"Hah!" Mahbub nodded with deepest eyes afire. "The game is well
played. That war is done now, and the evil, we hope, nipped before the
flower- thanks to me- and thee. What didst thou later?"

"I made the news as it were a hook to catch me victual and honour
among the villagers in a village whose priest drugged my lama. But I
bore away the old man's purse, and the Brahmin found nothing. So
next morning he was angry. Ho! Ho! And I also used the news when I
fell into the hands of that white regiment with their Bull!"

"That was foolishness." Mahbub scowled. "News is not meant to be
thrown about like dung-cakes, but used sparingly- like bhang."

"So I think now, and, moreover, it did me no sort of good. But
that was very long ago"- he made as to brush it all away with a thin
brown hand- "and since then, and especially in the nights under the
punkah at the madrissah, I have thought very greatly."

"Is it permitted to ask whither the Heaven-born's thought might have
led?" said Mahbub, with an elaborate sarcasm, smoothing his scarlet
beard.

"It is permitted," said Kim, and threw back the very tone. "They say
at Nucklao that no Sahib must tell a black man that he has made a
fault."

Mahbub's hand shot into his bosom, for to call a Pathan a "black
man" (kala admi) is a blood-insult. Then he remembered and laughed.
"Speak, Sahib: thy black man bears."

"But," said Kim, "I am not a Sahib, and I say I made a fault when
I cursed thee, Mahbub Ali, on the day at Umballa I thought I was
betrayed by a Pathan. I was senseless; for I was but newly caught, and
I wished to kill that low-caste drummer-boy. I say now, Hajji, that it
was well done; and I see my road all clear before me to a good
service. I will stay in the madrissah till I am ripe."

"Well said. Especially are distances and numbers and the manner of
using compasses to be learned in that game. One waits in the Hills
above to show thee."

"I will learn their teaching upon a condition- that my time is given
to me without question when the madrissah is shut. Ask that for me
of the Colonel."

"But why not ask the Colonel in the Sahib's tongue?"

"The Colonel is the servant of the Government. He is sent hither and
yon at a word, and must consider his own advancement. (See how much
I have already learned at Nucklao!) Moreover, the Colonel I know since
three months only. I have known one Mahbub Ali for six years. So! To
the madrissah I will go. At the madrissah I will learn. In the
madrissah I will be a Sahib. But when the madrissah is shut, then must
I be free and go among my people. Otherwise I die!"

"And who are thy People, Friend of all the World?"

"This great and beautiful land," said Kim, waving his paw round
the little clay-walled room where the oil-lamp in its niche burned
heavily through the tobacco-smoke. "And, further, I would see my
lama again. And further, I need money."

"That is the need of every one," said Mahbub ruefully. "I will
give thee eight annas, for much money is not picked out of horses'
hooves, and it must suffice for many days. As to all the rest, I am
well pleased, and no further talk is needed. Make haste to learn,
and in three years, or it may be less, thou wilt be an aid- even to
me."

"Have I been such a hindrance till now?" said Kim, with a boy's
giggle.

"Do not give answers," Mahbub grunted. "Thou art my new horse-boy.
Go and bed among my men. They are near the north end of the station,
with the horses."

"They will beat me to the south end of the station if I come without
authority."

Mahbub felt in his belt, wetted his thumb on a cake of Chinese
ink, and dabbed the impression on a piece of soft native paper. From
Balkh to Bombay men know that rough-ridged print with the old scar
running diagonally across it.

"That is enough to show my headman. I come in the morning."

"By which road?" said Kim.

"By the road from the City. There is but one, and then we return
to Creighton Sahib. I have saved thee a beating."

"Allah! What is a beating when the very head is loose on the
shoulders?"

Kim slid out quietly into the night, walked half round the house,
keeping close to the walls, and headed away from the station for a
mile or so. Then, fetching a wide compass, he worked back at
leisure, for he needed time to invent a story if any of Mahbub's
retainers asked questions.

They were camped on a piece of waste ground beside the railway, and,
being natives, had not, of course, unloaded the two trucks in which
Mahbub's animals stood among a consignment of country-breds bought
by the Bombay tram-company. The headman, a broken-down,
consumptive-looking Mohammedan, promptly challenged Kim, but was
pacified at sight of Mahbub's sign-manual.

"The Hajji has of his favour given me service," said Kim testily.
"If this be doubted, wait till he comes in the morning. Meantime, a
place by the fire."

Followed the usual aimless babble that every low-caste native must
raise on every occasion. It died down, and Kim lay out behind the
little knot of Mahbub's followers, almost under the wheels of a
horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among
brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded
horses and unwashen Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but
Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were
the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots
of St. Xavier's all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as
the repetition of the multiplication-table in English.

"I am very old," he thought sleepily. "Every month I become a year
more old. I was very young, and a fool to boot, when I took Mahbub's
message to Umballa. Even when I was with that white regiment I was
very young and small and had no wisdom. But now I learn every day, and
in three years the Colonel will take me out of the madrissah and let
me go upon the Road with Mahbub hunting for horses' pedigrees, or
maybe I shall go by myself; or maybe I shall find the lama and go with
him. Yes; that is best. To walk again as a chela with my lama when
he comes back to Benares." The thoughts came more slowly and
disconnectedly. He was plunging into a beautiful dreamland when his
ears caught a whisper, thin and sharp, above the monotonous babble
round the fire. It came from behind the iron-skinned horsetruck.

"He is not here then?"

"Where should he be but roystering in the City. Who looks for a
rat in a frog-pond? Come away. He is not our man."

"He must not go back beyond the Passes a second time. It is the
order."

"Hire some woman to drug him. It is a few rupees only, and there
is no evidence."

"Except the woman. It must be more certain; and remember the price
upon his head."

"Ay, but the police have a long arm, and we are far from the Border.
If it were in Peshawur now!"

"Yes- in Peshawur," the second voice sneered. "Peshawur, full of his
blood-kin- full of bolt-holes and women behind whose clothes he will
hide. Yes, Peshawur or Jehannum would suit us equally well."

"Then what is the plan?"

"O fool, have I not told it a hundred times. Wait till he comes to
lie down, and then one sure shot. The trucks are between us and
pursuit. We have but to run back over the lines and go our way. They
will not see whence the shot came. Wait here at least till the dawn.
What manner of faquir art thou to shiver at a little watching?"

"Oho!" thought Kim, behind close-shut eyes. "Once again it is
Mahbub. Indeed a white stallion's pedigree is not a good thing to
peddle to Sahibs! Or maybe Mahbub has been selling other news. Now
what is to do, Kim? I know not where Mahbub houses, and if he comes
here before the dawn they will shoot him. That would be no profit
for thee, Kim. And this is not a matter for the police. That would
be no profit for Mahbub; and," he giggled almost aloud, "I do not
remember any lesson at Nucklao which will help me. Allah! Here is
Kim and yonder are they. First then, Kim must wake and go away, so
that they shall not suspect. A bad dream wakes a man- thus- "

He threw the blanket off his face, and raised himself suddenly
with the terrible, bubbling, meaningless yell of the Asiatic roused by
nightmare.

"Urr-urr-urr-urr! Ya-la-la-la-la! Narain! The churel! The churel!"

A churel is the peculiarly malignant ghost of a woman who has died
in child-bed. She haunts lonely roads, her feet are turned backwards
on the ankles, and she leads men to torment.

Louder rose Kim's quavering howl, till at last he leaped to his feet
and staggered off sleepily, while the camp cursed him for waking them.
Some twenty yards farther up the line he lay down again, taking care
that the whisperers should hear his grunts and groans as he recomposed
himself. After a few minutes he rolled towards the road and stole away
into the thick darkness.

He paddled along swiftly till he came to a culvert, and dropped
behind it, his chin on a level with the coping-stone. Here he could
command all the night-traffic, himself unseen.

Two or three carts passed, jingling out to the suburbs; a coughing
policeman and a hurrying foot-passenger or two who sang to keep off
evil spirits. Then rapped the shod feet of a horse.

"Ah! This is more like Mahbub," thought Kim, as the beast shied at
the little head above the culvert.

"Ohe, Mahbub Ali," he whispered, "have a care!"

The horse was reined back almost on its haunches, and forced towards
the culvert.

"Never again," said Mahbub, "will I take a shod horse for nightwork.
They pick up all the bones and nails in the city." He stooped to
lift its forefoot, and that brought his head within a foot of Kim's.
"Down- keep down," he muttered. "The night is full of eyes."

"Two men wait thy coming behind the horse-trucks. They will shoot
thee at thy lying down, because there is a price on thy head. I heard,
sleeping near the horses."

"Didst thou see them?... Hold still, Sire of Devils!" This furiously
to the horse.

"No."

"Was one dressed belike as a faquir?"

"One said to the other, 'What manner of a faquir art thou, to shiver
at a little watching?'"

"Good. Go back to the camp and lie down. I do not die to-night."

Mahbub wheeled his horse and vanished. Kim tore back down the
ditch till he reached a point opposite his second resting-place,
slipped across the road like a weasel, and recoiled himself in the
blanket.

"At least Mahbub knows," he thought contentedly. "And certainly he
spoke as one expecting it. I do not think those two men will profit by
to-night's watch.

An hour passed, and, with the best will in the world to keep awake
all night, he slept deeply. Now and again a night train roared along
the metals within twenty feet of him; but he had all the Oriental's
indifference to mere noise, and it did not even weave a dream
through his slumber.

Mahbub was anything but asleep. It annoyed him vehemently that
people outside his tribe and unaffected by his casual amours should
pursue him for the life. His first and natural impulse was to cross
the line lower down, work up again, and, catching his well-wishers
from behind, summarily slay them. Here, he reflected with sorrow,
another branch of the Government, totally unconnected with Colonel
Creighton, might demand explanations which would be hard to supply;
and he knew that south the Border a perfectly ridiculous fuss is
made about a corpse or so. He had not been troubled in this way
since he sent Kim to Umballa with the message, and hoped that
suspicion had been finally diverted.

Then a most brilliant notion struck him.

"The English do eternally tell the truth," he said, "therefore we of
this country are eternally made foolish. By Allah, I will tell the
truth to an Englishman! Of what use is the Government police if a poor
Kabuli be robbed of his horses in their very trucks. This is as bad as
Peshawur! I should lay a complaint at the station. Better still,
some young Sahib on the Railway! They are zealous, and if they catch
thieves it is remembered to their honour."

He tied up his horse outside the station, and strode on to the
platform.

"Hullo, Mahbub Ali!" said a young Assistant District Traffic
Superintendent who was waiting to go down the line- a tall,
tow-haired, horsey youth in dingy white linen. "What are you doing
here? Selling weeds- eh?"

"No; I am not troubled for my horses. I come to look for Lutuf
Ullah. I have a truck-load up the line. Could any one take them out
without the Railway's knowledge?"

"'Shouldn't think so, Mahbub. You can claim against us if they do."

"I have seen two men crouching under the wheels of one of the trucks
nearly all the night. Faquirs do not steal horses, so I gave them no
more thought. I would find Lutuf Ullah, my partner."

"The deuce you did? And you didn't bother your head about it? 'Pon
my word, it's just almost as well that I met you. What were they like,
eh?"

"They were only faquirs. They will no more than take a little
grain perhaps from one of the trucks. There are many up the line.
The State will never miss the dole. I came here seeking for my
partner, Lutuf Ullah- "

"Never mind your partner. Where are your horse-trucks?"

"A little to this side of the farthest place where they make lamps
for the trains."

"The signal-box. Yes."

"And upon the rail nearest to the road upon the right-hand side-
looking up the line thus. But as regards Lutuf Ullah- a tall man
with a broken nose, and a Persian greyhound- Aie!"

The boy had hurried off to wake up a young and enthusiastic
policeman; for, as he said, the Railway had suffered much from
depredations in the goods-yard. Mahbub Ali chuckled in his dyed beard.

"They will walk in their boots, making a noise, and then they will
wonder why there are no faquirs. They are very clever boys- Barton
Sahib and Young Sahib."

He waited idly for a few minutes, expecting to see them hurry up the
line girt for action. A light engine slid through the station, and
he caught a glimpse of young Barton in the cab.

"I did that child an injustice. He is not altogether a fool," said
Mahbub Ali. "To take a fire-carriage for a thief is a new game!"

When Mahbub Ali came to his camp in the dawn, no one thought it
worth while to tell him any news of the night. No one, at least, but
one small horse-boy, newly advanced to the great man's service, whom
Mahbub called to his tiny tent to assist in some packing.

"It is all known to me," whispered Kim, bending above saddle-bags.
"Two Sahibs came up on a te-rain. I was running to and fro in the dark
on this side of the trucks as the te-rain moved up and down slowly.
They fell upon two men sitting under this truck- Hajji, what shall I
do with this lump of tobacco? Wrap it in paper and put it under the
salt-bag? Yes- and struck them down. But one man struck at a Sahib
with a faquir's buck's horn- (Kim meant the conjoined black-buck
horns, which are a faquir's sole temporal weapon)- "the blood came. So
the other Sahib, first smiting his own man senseless, smote the
stabber with a short gun which had rolled from the first man's hand.
They all raged as though mad together."

Mahbub smiled with heavenly resignation. "No! That is not so much
dewanee (madness, or a case for the civil court- the word can be
punned upon both ways) as nizamut (a criminal case). A gun sayest
thou? Ten good years in jail."

"Then they both lay still but I think they were nearly dead when
they were put on the te-rain. Their heads moved thus. And there is
much blood on the line. Come and see?"

"I have seen blood before. Jail is the sure place- and assuredly
they will give false names, and assuredly no man will find them for
a long time. They were unfriends of mine. Thy Fate and mine seem on
one string. What a tale for the healer of pearls! Now swiftly with the
saddle-bags and the cooking-platter. We will take out the horses and
away to Simla."

Swiftly- as Orientals understand speed- with long explanations, with
abuse and windy talk, carelessly, amid a hundred checks for little
things forgotten, the untidy camp broke up and led the half-dozen
stiff and fretful horses along the Kalka road in the fresh of the
rain-swept dawn. Kim, regarded as Mahbub Ali's favourite by all who
wished to stand well with the Pathan, was not called upon to work.
They strolled on by the easiest of stages, halting every few hours
at a wayside shelter. Very many Sahibs travel along the Kalka road;
and, as Mahbub Ali says, every young Sahib must needs esteem himself a
judge of a horse, and, though he be over head in debt to the
money-lender, must make as if to buy. That was the reason that Sahib
after Sahib, rolling along in a stage-carriage, would stop and open
talk. Some would even descend from their vehicles and feel the horses'
legs; asking inane questions, or, through sheer ignorance of the
vernacular, grossly insulting the imperturbable trader.


"When first I dealt with Sahibs, and that was when Colonel Soady
Sahib was Governor of Fort Abazai and flooded the Commissioner's
camping-ground for spite," Mahbub confided to Kim as the boy filled
his pipe under a tree, "I did not know how greatly they were fools,
and this made me wroth. As thus-" and he told Kim a tale of an
expression, misused in all innocence, that doubled Kim up with
mirth. Now I see, however"- he exhaled smoke slowly- "that it is
with them as with all men- in certain matters they are wise, and in
others most foolish. Very foolish it is to use the wrong word to a
stranger; for though the heart may be clean of offence, how is the
stranger to know that? He is more like to search truth with a dagger."

"True. True talk," said Kim solemnly. "Fools speak of a cat when a
woman is brought to bed, for instance. I have heard them."

"Therefore, in one situate as thou art, it particularly behoves thee
to remember this with both kinds of faces. Among Sahibs, never
forgetting thou art a Sahib; among the folk of Hind, always
remembering thou art-" he paused, with a puzzled smile.

"What am I? Mussalman, Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist? That is a hard
nut."

"Thou art beyond question an unbeliever, and therefore thou wilt
be damned. So says my Law- or I think it does. But thou art also my
Little Friend of all the World, and I love thee. So says my heart.
This matter of creeds is like horseflesh. The wise man knows horses
are good- that there is a profit to be made from all; and for
myself- but that I am a good Sunni and bate the men of Tirah- I
could believe the same of all the Faiths. Now manifestly a Kattiawar
mare taken from the sands of her birthplace and removed to the west of
Bengal founders- nor is even a Balkh stallion (and there are no better
horses than those of Balkh, were they not so heavy in the shoulder) of
any account in the great Northern deserts beside the snow-camels I
have seen. Therefore I say in my heart the Faiths are like the horses.
Each has merit in its own country.

"But my lama said altogether a different thing."

"Oh, he is an old dreamer of dreams from Bhotiyal. My heart is a
little angry, Friend of all the World, that thou shouldst see such
worth in a man so little known."

"It is true, Hajji; but that worth do I see; and to him my heart
is drawn."

"And his to thine, I hear. Hearts are like horses. They come and
they go against bit or spur. Shout Gul Sher Khan yonder to drive in
that bay stallion's pickets more firmly. We do not want a
horse-fight at every resting-stage, and the dun and the black will
be locked in a little.... Now hear me. Is it necessary to the
comfort of thy heart to see that lama?"

"It is one part of my bond," said Kim. "If I do not see him, and
if he is taken from me, I will go out of that madrissah in Nucklao
and, and- once gone, who is to find me again?"

"It is true. Never was colt held on a lighter heel-rope than
thou." Mahbub nodded his head.

"Do not be afraid." Kim spoke as though he could have evanished on
the moment. "My lama has said that he will come to see me at the
madrissah- "

"A beggar and his bowl in the presence of those young Sa- "

"Not all!" Kim cut in with a snort. "Their eyes are blued and
their nails are blackened with low-caste blood, many of them. Sons
of metheeranees- brothers-in-law to the bhungi" (sweeper).

 We need not follow the rest of the pedigree; but Kim made his
little point clearly and without heat, chewing a piece of sugar-cane
the while.

"Friend of all the World," said Mahbub, pushing over the pipe for
the boy to clean, "I have met many men, women, and boys, and not a few
Sahibs. I have never in all my days met such an imp as thou art."

"And why? When I always tell thee the truth."

"Perhaps the very reason, for this is a world of danger to honest
men." Mahbub Ali hauled himself off the ground, girt in his belt,
and went over to the horses.

"Or sell it?"

There was that in the tone that made Mahbub halt and turn. "What new
devilry?"

"Eight annas, and I will tell," said Kim, grinning. "It touches
thy peace."

"O Shaitan!" Mahbub gave the money.

"Rememberest thou the little business of the thieves in the dark,
down yonder at Umballa?"

"Seeing they sought my life, I have not altogether forgotten. "Why?"

"Rememberest thou the Kashmir Serai?"

"I will twist thy ears in a moment- Sahib."

"No need- Pathan. Only, the second faquir, whom the Sahibs beat
senseless, was the man who came to search thy bulkhead at Lahore. I
saw his face as they helped him on the engine. The very same man."

"Why didst thou not tell before?"

"Oh, he will go to jail, and be safe for some years. There is no
need to tell more than is necessary at any one time. Besides, I did
not then need money for sweetmeats."

"Allah Karim!" said Mahbub Ali. "Wilt thou some day sell my head for
a few sweetmeats if the fit takes thee?"


Kim will remember till he dies that long, lazy journey from Umballa,
through Kalka and the Pinjore Gardens near by, up to Simla. A sudden
spate in the Gugger River swept down one horse (the most valuable,
be sure), and nearly drowned Kim among the dancing boulders. Farther
up the road the horses were stampeded by a Government elephant, and
being in high condition of grass food, it cost a day and a half to get
them together again. Then they met Sikandar Khan coming down with a
few unsaleable screws- remnants of his string- and Mahbub, who has
more of horse-coping in his little finger nail than Sikandar Khan in
all his tents, must needs buy two of the worst, and that meant eight
hours' laborious diplomacy and untold tobacco. But it was all pure
delight- the wandering road, climbing, dipping, and sweeping about the
growing spurs; the flush of the morning laid along the distant
snows; the branched cacti, tier upon tier on the stony hillsides;
the voices of a thousand water-channels; the chatter of the monkeys;
the solemn deodars, climbing one after another with down-drooped
branches; the vista of the Plains rolled out far beneath them; the
incessant twanging of the tonga-horns and the wild rush of the led
horses when a tonga swung round a curve; the halts for prayers (Mahbub
was very religious in dry-washings and bellowings when time did not
press); the evening conferences by the halting-places, when camels and
bullocks chewed solemnly together and the stolid drivers told the news
of the Road- all these things lifted Kim's heart to song within him.

"But, when the singing and dancing is done," said Mahbub Ali, "comes
the Colonel Sahib's, and that is not so sweet."

"A fair land- a most beautiful land is this of Hind- and the land of
the Five Rivers is fairer than all," Kim half chanted. "Into it I will
go again if Mahbub Ali or the Colonel lift hand or foot against me.
Once gone, who shall find me? Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of
Simla? Allah, what a city!"

"My father's brother, and he was an old man when Mackerson Sahib's
well was new at Peshawur, could recall when there were but two
houses in it."

He led the horses below the main road into the lower Simla bazar-
the crowded rabbit-warren that climbs up from the valley to the
town-hall at an angle of forty-five. A man who knows his way there can
defy all the police of India's summer capital; so cunningly does
veranda communicate with veranda, alley-way with alley-way, and
bolt-hole with bolt-hole. Here live those who minister to the wants of
the glad city- jhampanis who pull the pretty ladies' rickshaws by
night and gamble till the dawn; grocers, oil-sellers, curio-vendors,
firewood dealers, priests, pickpockets, and native employees of the
Government: here are discussed by courtesans the things which are
supposed to be profoundest secrets of the India Council; and here
gather all the sub-sub-agents of half the native States. Here, too,
Mahbub Ali rented a room, much more securely locked than his
bulkhead at Lahore, in the house of a Mohammedan cattle-dealer. It was
a place of miracles, too, for there went in at twilight a Mohammedan
horse-boy, and there came out an hour later a Eurasian lad- the
Lucknow girl's dye was of the best- in badly fitting shop-clothes.

"I have spoken with Creighton Sahib," quoth Mahbub Ali, "and a
second time has the Hand of Friendship averted the Whip of Calamity.
He says that thou hast altogether wasted sixty days upon the Road, and
it is too late, therefore, to send thee to any hill-school.

"I have said that my holidays are my own. I do not go to school
twice over. That is one part of my bond."

"The Colonel Sahib is not yet aware of the contract. Thou art to
lodge in Lurgan Sahib's house till it is time to go again to Nucklao."

"I had sooner lodge with thee, Mahbub."

"Thou dost not know the honour. Lurgan Sahib himself asked for thee.
Thou wilt go up the hill and along the road atop, and there thou
must forget for a while that thou hast ever seen or spoken to me,
Mahbub Ali, who sells horses to Creighton Sahib, whom thou dost not
know. Remember this order."

Kim nodded. "Good," said he, "and who is Lurgan Sahib? Nay"- he
caught Mahbub's sword-keen glance- "indeed I have never heard his
name. Is he by chance"- he his voice- "one of us?"

"What talk is this of us, Sahib?" Mahbub Ali returned, in the tone
he used towards Europeans. "I am a Pathan; thou art a Sahib and the
son of a Sahib. Lurgan Sahib has a shop among the European shops.
All Simla knows it. Ask there... and, Friend of all the World, he is
one to be obeyed to the last wink of his eyelashes. Men say he does
magic, but that should not touch thee. Go up the hill and ask. Here
begins the Great Game."

                                9


               S'doaks was son of Yelth the wise-
                 Chief of the Raven clan.
               Itswoot the Bear had him in care
                 To make him a medicine-man.

               He was quick and quicker to learn-
                 Bold and bolder to dare:
               He danced the dread Kloo-Kwallie Dance
                 To tickle Itswoot the Bear!
                                   " OREGON  LEGEND "


Kim flung himself whole-heartedly upon the next turn of the wheel.
He would be a Sahib again for a while. In that idea, so soon as he had
reached the broad road under Simla townhall, he cast about for one
to impress. A Hindu child, some ten years old, squatted under a
lamp-post.

"Where is Mr. Lurgan's house?" demanded Kim.

"I do not understand English," was the answer, and Kim shifted his
speech accordingly.

"I will show."

Together they set off through the mysterious dusk, full of the
noises of a city below the hillside, and the breath of a cool wind
in deodar-crowned Jakko, shouldering the stars. The house-lights,
scattered on every level made, as it were, a double firmament. Some
were fixed, others belonged to the rickshaws of the careless,
open-spoken English folk, going out to dinner.

"It is here," said Kim's guide, and halted in a veranda flush with
the main road. No door stayed them, but a curtain of beaded reeds that
split up the lamp-light beyond.

"He is come," said the boy, in a voice little louder than a sigh,
and vanished. Kim felt sure that the boy had been posted to guide
him from the first, but putting a bold face on it, parted the curtain.
A black-bearded man, with a green shade over his eyes, sat at a table,
and, one by one, with short, white hands, picked up globules of
light from a tray before him, threaded them on a glancing silken
string, and hummed to himself the while. Kim was conscious that beyond
the circle of light the room was full of things that smelt like all
the temples of all the East. A whiff of musk, a puff of sandalwood,
and a breath of sickly jessamine-oil caught his opened nostrils.

"I am here," said Kim at last, speaking in the vernacular: the
smells made him forget that he was to be a Sahib.

"Seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one," the man counted to himself,
stringing pearl after pearl so quickly that Kim could scarcely
follow his fingers. He slid off the green shade and looked fixedly
at Kim for a full half-minute. The pupils of the eyes dilated and
closed to pin-pricks, as if at will. There was a faquir by the Taksali
Gate who had just this gift and made money by it, especially when
cursing silly women. Kim stared with interest. His disreputable friend
could further twitch his ears, almost like a goat, and Kim was
disappointed that this new man could not imitate him.

"Do not be afraid," said Mr. Lurgan suddenly.

"Why should I fear?"

"Thou wilt sleep here to-night, and stay with me till it is time
to go again to Nucklao. It is an order."

"It is an order," Kim repeated. "But where shall I sleep?"

"Here, in this room." Lurgan Sahib waved his hand towards the
darkness behind him.

"So be it," said Kim composedly. "Now?"

He nodded and held the lamp above his head. As the light swept them,
there leaped out from the walls a collection of Tibetan devil-dance
masks, hanging above the fiend-embroidered draperies of those
ghastly functions- horned masks, scowling masks, and masks of
idiotic terror. In a corner, a Japanese warrior, mailed and plumed,
menaced him with a halberd, and a score of lances and khandas and
kuttars gave back the unsteady gleam. But what interested Kim more
than all these things- he had seen devil-dance masks at the Lahore
Museum- was a glimpse of the soft-eyed Hindu child who had left him in
the doorway, sitting cross-legged under the table of pearls with a
little smile on his scarlet lips.

"I think that Lurgan Sahib wishes to make me afraid. And I am sure
that the devil's brat below the table wishes to see me afraid. This
place," he said aloud, "is like a Wonder House. Where is my bed?"

Lurgan Sahib pointed to a native quilt in a corner by the
loathsome masks, picked up the lamp, and left the room black.

"Was that Lurgan Sahib?" Kim asked as he cuddled down. No answer. He
could hear the Hindu boy breathing, however, and, guided by the sound,
crawled across the floor, and cuffed into the darkness, crying:
"Give answer, devil! Is this the way to lie to a Sahib?"

"From the darkness he fancied he could hear the echo of a chuckle.
It could not be his soft-fleshed companion, because he was weeping. So
Kim lifted up his voice and called aloud: "Lurgan Sahib! O Lurgan
Sahib! Is it an order that thy servant does not speak to me?"

"It is an order." The voice came from behind him and he started.

"Very good. But remember," he muttered, as he resought the quilt, "I
will beat thee in the morning. I do not love Hindus."

That was no cheerful night; the room being overfull of voices and
music. Kim was waked twice by some one calling his name. The second
time he set out in search, and ended by bruising his nose against a
box that certainly spoke with a human tongue, but in no sort of
human accent. It seemed to end in a tin trumpet and to be joined by
wires to a smaller box on the floor- so far, at least, as he could
judge by touch. And the voice, very hard and whirring, came out of the
trumpet. Kim rubbed his nose and grew furious, thinking, as usual in
Hindi.

"This with a beggar from the bazar might be good but- I am a Sahib
and the son of a Sahib and, which is twice as much more beside, a
student of Nucklao. Yess" (here he turned to English), "a boy of St.
Xavier's. Damn Mr. Lurgan's eyes!- It is some sort of machinery like a
sewing-machine. Oh, it is a great cheek of him- we are not
frightened that way at Lucknow- No!" Then in Hindi: "But what does
he gain? He is only a trader- I am in his shop. But Creighton Sahib is
a Colonel- and I think Creighton Sahib gave orders that it should be
done. How I will beat that Hindu in the morning! What is this?"

The trumpet-box was pouring out a string of the most elaborate abuse
that even Kim had ever heard, in a high uninterested voice, that for a
moment lifted the short hairs of his neck. When the vile thing drew
breath, Kim was reassured by the soft, sewing-machine-like whirr.

"Chup!" (be still) he cried, and again he heard a chuckle that
decided him. "Chup- or I break your head."

The box took no heed. Kim wrenched at the tin trumpet and
something lifted with a click. He had evidently raised a lid. If there
were a devil inside, now was its time for- he sniffed- thus did the
sewing-machines of the bazar smell. He would clean that shaitan, He
slipped off his jacket, and plunged it into the box's mouth. Something
long and round bent under the pressure, there was a whirr and the
voice stopped- as voices must if you ram a thrice-doubled coat on to
the wax cylinder and into the works of an expensive phonograph. Kim
finished his slumbers with a serene mind.

In the morning he was aware of Lurgan Sahib looking down on him.

"Oah!" said Kim, firmly resolved to cling to his Sahibdom. "There
was a box in the night that gave me bad talk. So I stopped it. Was
it your box?"

The man held out his hand.

"Shake hands, O'Hara," he said. "Yes, it was my box. I keep such
things because my friends the Rajahs like them. That one is broken,
but it was cheap at the price. Yes, my friends the Kings are very fond
of toys- and so am I sometimes."

Kim looked him over out of the corners of his eyes. He was a Sahib
in that he wore Sahib's clothes; the accent of his Urdu, the
intonation of his English, showed that he was anything but a Sahib. He
seemed to understand what moved in Kim's mind ere the boy opened his
mouth, and he took no pains to explain himself as did Father Victor or
the Lucknow masters. Sweetest of all- he treated Kim as an equal on
the Asiatic side.

"I am sorry you cannot beat my boy this morning. He says he will
kill you with a knife or poison. He is jealous, so I have put him in
the corner and I shall not speak to him to-day. He has just tried to
kill me. You must help me with the breakfast. He is almost too jealous
to trust, just now."

Now a genuine imported Sahib from England would have made a great to
do over this tale. Lurgan Sahib stated it as simply as Mahbub Ali
was used to record his little affairs in the North.

The back veranda of the shop was built out over the sheer
hillside, and they looked down into their neighbors' chimney-pots,
as is the custom of Simla. But even more than the purely Persian
meal cooked by Lurgan Sahib with his own hands, the shop fascinated
Kim. The Lahore Museum was larger, but here were more wonders-
ghost-daggers and prayer-wheels from Tibet; turquoise and raw amber
necklaces; green jade bangles; curiously packed incense-sticks in jars
crusted over with raw garnets; the devil-masks of overnight and a wall
of peacock-blue draperies; gilt figures of Buddha, and little portable
lacquer altars; Russian samovars with turquoises on the lid; egg-shell
china sets in quaint octagonal cane boxes; yellow ivory crucifixes-
from Japan of all places in the world, so Lurgan Sahib said; carpets
in dusty bales, smelling atrociously, pushed back behind torn and
rotten screens of geometrical work; Persian water-jugs for the hands
after meals; dull copper incense-burners neither Chinese nor
Persian, with friezes of fantastic devils running round them;
tarnished silver belts that knotted like raw hide; hairpins of jade,
ivory, and plasma; arms of all sorts and kinds, and a thousand other
oddments were cased, or piled, or merely thrown into the room, leaving
a clear space only round the rickety deal table, where Lurgan Sahib
worked.

"Those things are nothing," said his host, following Kim's glance.
"I buy them because they are pretty, and sometimes I sell- if I like
the buyer's look. My work is on the table- some of it."

It blazed in the morning light- all red and blue and green
flashes, picked out with the vicious blue-white spurt of a diamond
here and there. Kim opened his eyes.

"Oh, they are quite well, those stones. It will not hurt them to
take the sun. Besides, they are cheap. But with sick stones it is very
different." He piled Kim's plate anew. "There is no one but me can
doctor a sick pearl and re-blue turquoises. I grant you opals- any
fool can cure an opal- but for a sick pearl there is only me.
Suppose I were to die! Then there would be no one.... Oh no! You
cannot do anything with jewels. It will be quite enough if you
understand a little about the Turquoise- some day."

He moved to the end of the veranda to refill the heavy, porous
clay water-jug from the filter.

"Do you want drink?"

Kim nodded. Lurgan Sahib, fifteen feet off, laid one hand on the
jar. Next instant, it stood at Kim's elbow, full to within half an
inch of the brim- the white cloth only showing, by a small wrinkle,
where it had slid into place.

"Wah!" said Kim in most utter amazement. "That is magic." Lurgan
Sahib's smile showed that the compliment had gone home.

"Throw it back."

"It will break."

"I say, throw it back."

Kim pitched it at random. It fell short and crashed into fifty
pieces, while the water dripped through the rough veranda boarding.

"I said it would break."

"All one. Look at it. Look at the largest piece."

That lay with a sparkle of water in its curve, as it were a star
on the floor. Kim looked intently; Lurgan Sahib laid one hand gently
on the nape of the neck, stroked it twice or thrice, and whispered:
"Look! It shall come to life again, piece by piece. First the big
piece shall join itself to two others on the right and left- on the
right and the left. Look!"

To save his life, Kim could not have turned his head. The light
touch held him as in a vise, and his blood tingled pleasantly
through him. There was one large piece of the jar where there had been
three, and above them the shadowy outline of the entire vessel. He
could see the veranda through it, but it was thickening and
darkening with each beat of his pulse. Yet the jar- how slowly the
thoughts came!- the jar had been smashed before his eyes. Another wave
of prickling fire raced down his neck, as Lurgan Sahib moved his hand.

"Look! It is coming into shape," said Lurgan Sahib.

So far Kim had been thinking in Hindi, but a tremor came on him, and
with an effort like that of a swimmer before sharks, who hurls himself
half out of the water, his mind leaped up from a darkness that was
swallowing it and took refuge in- the multiplication-table in English!

"Look! It is coming into shape," whispered Lurgan Sahib.

The jar had been smashed- yess, smashed- not the native word, he
would not think of that- but smashed- into fifty pieces, and twice
three was six, and thrice three was nine, and four times three was
twelve. He clung desperately to the repetition. The shadow-outline
of the jar cleared like a mist after rubbing eyes. There were the
broken shards; there was the spilt water drying in the sun, and
through the cracks of the veranda showed, all ribbed, the white
house-wall below- and thrice twelve was thirty-six!

"Look! Is it coming into shape?" asked Lurgan Sahib.

"But it is smashed- smashed," he gasped- Lurgan Sahib had been
muttering softly for the last half-minute. Kim wrenched his head
aside. "Look! Dekho! It is there as it was there."

"It is there as it was there," said Lurgan, watching Kim closely
while the boy rubbed his neck. "But you are the first of a many who
have ever seen it so." He wiped his broad forehead.

"Was that more magic?" Kim asked suspiciously. The tingle had gone
from his veins; he felt unusually wide awake.

"No, that was not magic. It was only to see if there was- a flaw
in a jewel. Sometimes very fine jewels will fly all to pieces if a man
holds them in his hand, and knows the proper way. That is why one must
be careful before one sets them. Tell me, did you see the shape of the
pot?"

"For a little time. It began to grow like a flower from the ground."

"And then what did you do? I mean, how did you think?"

"Oah! I knew it was broken, and so, I think, that was what I
thought- and it was broken."

"Hm! Has anyone ever done that same sort of magic to you before?"

"If it was," said Kim, "do you think I should let it again? I should
run away."

"And now you are not afraid- eh?"

"Not now."

Lurgan Sahib looked at him more closely than ever. "I shall ask
Mahbub Ali- not now, but some day later," he muttered. "I am pleased
with you- yes; and I am pleased with you- no. You are the first that
ever saved himself. I wish I knew what it was that... But you are
right. You should not tell that- not even to me."

"He turned into the dusky gloom of the shop, and sat down at the
table, rubbing his hands softly. A small, husky sob came from behind a
pile of carpets. It was the Hindu child obediently facing towards
the wall: his thin shoulders worked with grief.

"Ah! He is jealous, so jealous. I wonder if he will try to poison me
again in my breakfast, and make me cook it twice."

"Kubbee- kubbee nahin," came the broken answer.

"And whether he will kill this other boy?"

"Kubbee- kubbee nahin" (never- never. No!).

"What do you think he will do?" He turned suddenly on Kim.

"Oah! I do not know. Let him go, perhaps. Why did he want to
poison you?"

"Because he is so fond of me. Suppose you were fond of some one, and
you saw some one come, and the man you were fond of was more pleased
with him than he was with you, what would you do?"

Kim thought. Lurgan repeated the sentence slowly in the vernacular.

"I should not poison that man," said Kim reflectively, "but I should
beat that boy- if that boy was fond of my man. But first I would ask
that boy if it were true."

"Ah! He thinks every one must be fond of me."

"Then I think he is a fool."

"Hearest thou?" said Lurgan Sahib to the shaking shoulders. "The
Sahib's son thinks thou art a little fool. Come out, and next time thy
heart is troubled, do not try white arsenic quite so openly. Surely
the Devil Dasim was lord of our table-cloth that day! It might have
made me ill, child, and then a stranger would have guarded the jewels.
Come!"

The child, heavy-eyed with much weeping, crept out from behind the
bale and flung himself passionately at Lurgan Sahib's feet, with an
extravagance of remorse that impressed even Kim.

"I will look into the ink-pools- I will faithfully guard the jewels!
Oh, my father and my mother, send him away!" He indicated Kim with a
backward jerk of his bare heel.

"Not yet- not yet. In a little while he will go away again. But
now he is at school-at a new madrissah- and thou shalt be his teacher.
Play the Play of the Jewels against him. I will keep tally."

The child dried his tears at once, and dashed to the back of the
shop, whence he returned with a copper tray.

"Give me!" he said to Lurgan Sahib. "Let them come from thy hand,
for he may say that I knew them before."

"Gently- gently," the man replied, and from a drawer under the table
dealt a half handful of clattering trifles into the tray.

"Now," said the child, waving an old newspaper. "Look on them as
long as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if need be, handle. One look
is enough for me." He turned his back proudly.

"But what is the game?"

"When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst
remember them all, I cover them with this paper, and thou must tell
over the tally to Lurgan Sahib. I will write mine."

"Oah!" The instinct of competition waked in his breast. He bent over
the tray. There were but fifteen stones on it "That is easy," he
said after a minute. The child slipped the paper over the winking
jewels and scribbled in a native account-book.

"There are under that paper five blue stones- one big, one
smaller, and three small," said Kim, all in haste. "There are four
green stones, and one with a hole in it; there is one yellow stone
that I can see through, and one like a pipe-stem. There are two red
stones, and- and- I made the count fifteen, but two I have
forgotten. No! Give me time. One was of ivory, little and brownish;
and- and- give me time..."

"One- two"- Lurgan Sahib counted him out up to ten. Kim shook his
head.

"Hear my count!" the child burst in, trilling with laughter. "First,
are two flawed sapphires- one of two ruttees and one of four as I
should judge. The four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. There
is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there are
two inscribed- one with a Name of God in gilt, and the other being
cracked across, for it came out of an old ring, I cannot read. We have
now all five blue stones. Four flawed emeralds there are, but one is
drilled in two places, and one is a little carven- "

"Their weights?" said Lurgan Sahib impassively.

"Three- five- five- and four ruttees as I judge it. There is one
piece of old greenish pipe amber, and a cut topaz from Europe. There
is one ruby of Burma, of two ruttees, without a flaw, and there is a
balas-ruby, flawed, of two ruttees. There is a carved ivory from China
representing a rat sucking an egg; and there is last- ah ha!- a ball
of crystal as big as a bean set in a gold leaf."

He clapped his hands at the close.

"He is thy master," said Lurgan Sahib, smiling.

"Huh! He knew the names of the stones," said Kim, flushing. "Try
again! With common things such as he and I both know."

They heaped the tray again with odds and ends gathered from the
shop, and even the kitchen, and every time the child won, till Kim
marvelled.

"Bind my eyes- let me feel once with my fingers, and even then I
will leave thee open-eyed behind," he challenged.

Kim stamped with vexation when the lad made his boast good.

"If it were men- or horses," he said, "I could do better. This
playing with tweezers and knives and scissors is too little."

"Learn first- teach later," said Lurgan Sahib. "Is he thy master?"

"Truly. But how is it done?"

"By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly- for it is
worth doing."

The Hindu boy, in highest feather, actually patted Kim on the back.

"Do not despair," he said. "I myself will teach thee."

"And I will see that thou art well taught," said Lurgan Sahib, still
speaking in the vernacular, "for except my boy here- it was foolish of
him to buy so much white arsenic when, if he had asked, I could have
given it- except my boy here I have not in a long time met with one
better worth teaching. And there are ten days more ere thou canst
return to Lucknow where they teach nothing- at the long price. We
shall, I think, be friends."

They were a most mad ten days, but Kim enjoyed himself too much to
reflect on their craziness. In the morning they played the Jewel Game-
sometimes with veritable stones, sometimes with piles of swords and
daggers, sometimes with photographs of natives. Through the afternoons
he and the Hindu boy would mount guard in the shop, sitting dumb
behind a carpet-bale or a screen and watching Mr. Lurgan's many and
very curious visitors. There were small Rajahs, escorts coughing in
the veranda, who came to buy curiosities- such as phonographs and
mechanical toys. There were ladies in search of necklaces, and men, it
seemed to Kim- but his mind may have been vitiated by early
training- in search of the ladies; natives from independent and
feudatory courts whose ostensible business was the repair of broken
necklaces- rivers of light poured out upon the table- but whose true
end seemed to be to raise money for angry Maharanees or young
Rajahs. There were Babus to whom Lurgan Sahib talked with austerity
and authority, but at the end of each interview he gave them money
in coined silver and currency notes. There were occasional
gatherings of long-coated theatrical natives who discussed metaphysics
in English and Bengali, to Mr. Lurgan's great edification. He was
always interested in religions. At the end of the day, Kim and the
Hindu boy- whose name varied at Lurgan's pleasure- were expected to
give a detailed account of all that they had seen and heard- their
view of each man's character, as shown in his face, talk, and
manner, and their notions of his real errand. After dinner, Lurgan
Sahib's fancy turned more to what might be called dressing-up, in
which game he took a most informing interest. He could paint faces
to a marvel; with a brush-dab here and a line there changing them past
recognition. The shop was full of all manner of dresses and turbans,
and Kim was apparelled variously as a young Mohammedan of good family,
an oilman, and once- which was a joyous evening- as the son of an Oudh
landholder in the fullest of full dress. Lurgan Sahib had a hawk's eye
to detect the least flaw in the make-up; and lying on a worn teak-wood
couch, would explain by the half-hour together how such and such a
caste talked, or walked, or coughed, or spat, or sneezed, and, since
"hows" matter little in this world, the "why" of everything. The Hindu
child played this game clumsily. That little mind, keen as an icicle
where tally of jewels was concerned, could not temper itself to
enter another's soul; but a demon in Kim woke up and sang with joy
as he put on the changing dresses, and changed speech and gesture
therewith.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he volunteered to show Lurgan Sahib
one evening how the disciples of a certain caste of faquir, old Lahore
acquaintances, begged doles by the roadside; and what sort of language
he would use to an Englishman, to a Punjabi farmer going to a fair,
and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and
begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour- cross-legged,
ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that
time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with
fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan
Sahib- this annoyed Kim- watched the Babu and not the play.

"I think," said the Babu heavily, lighting a cigarette, I am of
opeenion that it is most extraordinary and effeecient performance.
Except that you had told me I should have opined that- that- that
you were pulling my legs. How soon can he become approximately
effeecient chain-man? Because then I shall indent for him."

That is what he must learn at Lucknow."

"Then order him to be jolly dam-quick. Good-night, Lurgan." The Babu
swung out with the gait of a bogged cow.

When they were telling over the day's list of visitors, Lurgan Sahib
asked Kim who he thought the man might be.

"God knows!" said Kim cheerily. The tone might almost have
deceived Mahbub Ali, but it failed entirely with the healer of sick
pearls.

"That is true. God, He knows; but I wish to know what you think."

Kim glanced sideways at his companion, whose eye had a way of
compelling truth.

"I- I think he will want me when I come from the school, but"-
confidentially, as Lurgan Sahib nodded approval- "I do not
understand how he can wear many dresses and talk many tongues."

"Thou wilt understand many things later. He is a writer of tales for
a certain Colonel. His honour is great only in Simla, and it is
noticeable that he has no name, but only a number and a letter- that
is a custom among us."

"And is there a price upon his head too- as upon Mah- all the
others?"

"Not yet; but if a boy rose up who is now sitting here and went-
look, the door is open!- as far as a certain house with a
red-painted veranda, behind that which was the old theatre in the
Lower Bazar, and whispered through the shutters: 'Hurree Chunder
Mookerjee bore the bad news of last month,' that boy might take away a
belt full of rupees."

"How many?" said Kim promptly.

"Five hundred- a thousand- as many as he might ask for."

"Good. And how long might such a boy live after the news was
told?" He smiled merrily at Lurgan Sahib's very beard.

"Ah! That is to be well thought of. Perhaps if he were very
clever, he might live out the day- but not the night. By no means
the night."

"Then what is the Babu's pay if so much is put upon his head?"

"Eighty- perhaps a hundred- perhaps a hundred and fifty rupees;
but the pay is the least part of the work. From time to time, God
causes men to be born- and thou art one of them- who have a lust to go
abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news- to-day it may
be of far-off things, to-morrow of some hidden mountain, and the
next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the
State. These souls are very few; and of these few, not more than ten
are of the best. Among these ten I count the Babu, and that is
curious. How great therefore and desirable must be a business that
brazens the heart of a Bengali!"

"True. But the days go slowly for me. I am yet a boy, and it is only
within two months I learned to write Angrezi. Even now I cannot read
it well. And there are yet years and years and long years before I can
be even a chain-man."

"Have patience, Friend of all the World"- Kim started at the
title. "Would I had a few of the years that so irk thee. I have proved
thee in several small ways. This will not be forgotten when I make
my report to the Colonel Sahib." Then, changing suddenly into
English with a deep laugh:-

"By Jove! O'Hara, I think there is a great deal in you; but you must
not become proud and you must not talk. You must go back to Lucknow
and be a good little boy and mind your book, as the English say, and
perhaps, next holidays if you care, you can come back to me!" Kim's
face fell. "Oh, I mean if you like. I know where you want to go."

Four days later a seat was booked for Kim and his small trunk at the
rear of a Kalka tonga. His companion was the whale-like Babu, who,
with a fringed shawl wrapped round his head, and his fat
openwork-stockinged left leg tucked under him, shivered and grunted in
the morning chill.

"How comes it that this man is one of us?" thought Kim,
considering the jelly-back as they jolted down the road; and the
reflection threw him into most pleasant day-dreams. Lurgan Sahib had
given him five rupees- a splendid sum- as well as the assurance of his
protection if he worked. Unlike Mahbub, Lurgan Sahib had spoken most
explicitly of the reward that would follow obedience, and Kim was
content. If only, like the Babu, he could enjoy the dignity of a
letter and a number- and a price upon his head! Some day he would be
all that and more. Some day he might be almost as great as Mahbub Ali!
The housetops of his search should be half India; he would follow
Kings and ministers, as in the old days he had followed vakils and
lawyers' touts across Lahore city for Mahbub Ali's sake. Meantime,
there was the present, and not at all unpleasant, fact of St. Xavier's
immediately before him. There would be new boys to condescend to,
and there would be tales of holiday adventures to hear. Young
Martin, son of the tea-planter at Manipur, had boasted that he would
go to war, with a rifle, against the head-hunters. That might be,
but it was certain young Martin had not been blown half across the
forecourt of a Patiala palace by an explosion of fireworks; nor had
he.... Kim fell to telling himself the story of his own adventures
through the last three months. He could paralyse St. Xavier's- even
the biggest boys who shaved- with the recital, were that permitted.
But it was, of course, out of the question. There would be a price
upon his head in good time, as Lurgan Sahib had assured him; and if he
talked foolishly now, not only would that price never be set, but
Colonel Creighton would cast him off- and he would be left to the
wrath of Lurgan Sahib and Mahbub Ali- for the short space of life that
would remain to him.

"So I should lose Delhi for the sake of a fish," was his
proverbial philosophy. It behoved him to forget his holidays (there
would always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures) and, as
Lurgan Sahib had said, to work.

Of all the boys hurrying back to St. Xavier's, from Sukkur in the
sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with virtue as
Kimball O'Hara, jiggeting down to Umballa behind Hurree Chunder
Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the
Ethnological Survey was R.17.

And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a
huge meal at Kalka, he spoke uninterruptedly. Was Kim going to school?
Then he, an M.A. of Calcutta University, would explain the
advantages of education. There were marks to be gained by due
attention to Latin and Wordsworth's "Excursion" (all this was Greek to
Kim). French, too, was vital, and the best was to be picked up in
Chandernagore, a few miles from Calcutta. Also a man might go far,
as he himself had done, by strict attention to plays called "Lear" and
"Julius Caesar"; both much in demand by examiners. "Lear" was not so
full of historical allusions as "Julius Caesar"; the book cost four
annas, but could be bought second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. Still
more important than Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and
Hare, was the art and science of mensuration. A boy who had passed his
examination in these branches- for which, by the way, there were no
cram-books- could, by merely marching over a country with a compass
and a level and a straight eye, carry away a picture of that country
which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as it was
occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains, a boy
would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that
when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called "adventitious aids"
he might still tread his distances. To keep count of thousands of
paces, Hurree Chunder's experience had shown him nothing more valuable
than a rosary of eighty-one or a hundred and eight beads, for "it
was divisible and subdivisible into many multiples and
submultiples." Through the volleying drifts of English, Kim caught the
general trend of the talk, and it interested him very much. Here was a
new craft that a man could tuck away in his head; and by the look of
the large wide world unfolding itself before him, it seemed that the
more a man knew the better for him.

Said the Babu when he had talked for an hour and a half, "I hope
some day to enjoy your offeecial acquaintance. Ad interim, if I may be
pardoned that expression, I shall give you this betel-box which is
highly valuable article and cost me two rupees only four years ago."
It was a cheap, heart-shaped brass thing with three compartments for
carrying the eternal betel-nut, lime and pan-leaf; but it was filled
with little tabloid-bottles. "That is reward of merit for your
performance in character of that holy man. You see, you are so young
you think you will last for ever and not take care of your body. It is
great nuisance to go sick in the middle of business. I am fond of
drugs myself, and they are handy to cure poor people too. These are
good departmental drugs- quinine and so on. I give it you for
souvenir. Now good-bye. I have urgent private business here by the
roadside."

He slipped out noiselessly as a cat, on the Umballa road, hailed a
passing ekka and jingled away, while Kim, tongue-tied, twiddled the
brass betel-box in his hands.


The record of a boy's education interests few save his parents, and,
as you know, Kim was an orphan. It is written in the books of St.
Xavier in Partibus that a report of Kim's progress was forwarded at
the end of each term to Colonel Creighton and to Father Victor, from
whose hands duly came the money for his schooling. It is further
recorded in the same books that he showed a great aptitude for
mathematical studies as well as map-making, and carried away a prize
("The Life of Lord Lawrence," tree-calf, two vols., nine rupees, eight
annas) for proficiency therein; and the same term played in St.
Xavier's eleven against the Allyghur Mohammedan College, his age being
fourteen years and ten months. He was also re-vaccinated (from which
we may assume that there had been another epidemic of small-pox at
Lucknow) about the same time. Pencil notes on the edge of an old
muster-roll record that he was punished several times for
"conversing with improper persons," and it seems that he was once
sentenced to heavy pains for "absenting himself for a day in the
company of a street beggar." That was when he got over the gate and
pleaded with the lama through a whole day down the banks of the
Goomtee to accompany him on the Road next holidays- for one month- for
a little week; and the lama set his face as a flint against it,
averring that the time had not yet come. Kim's business, said the
old man as they ate cakes together, was to get all the wisdom of the
Sahibs and then he would see. The hand of friendship must in some
way have averted the whip of calamity, for six weeks later Kim seems
to have passed an examination in elementary surveying "with great
credit," his age being fifteen years and eight months. From this
date the record is silent. His name does not appear in the year's
batch of those who entered for the subordinate Survey of India, but
against it stand the words "removed on appointment."

Several times in those three years, cast up at the Temple of the
Tirthankers in Benares the lama, a little thinner and a shade
yellower, if that were possible, but gentle and untainted as ever.
Sometimes it was from the South that he came- from south of Tuticorin,
whence the wonderful fire-boats go to Ceylon where are priests who
know Pali; sometimes it was from the wet green West and the thousand
cotton-factory chimneys that ring Bombay; and once from the North,
where he had doubled back eight hundred miles to talk a day with the
Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House. He would stride to his
cell in the cool, cut marble- the priests of the temple were good to
the old man- wash off the dust of travel, make prayer, and depart
for Lucknow, well accustomed now to the ways of the rail, in a
third-class carriage. Returning, it was noticeable, as his friend
the Seeker pointed out to the head-priest, that he ceased for a
while to mourn the loss of his River, or to draw wondrous pictures
of the Wheel of Life, but preferred to talk of the beauty and wisdom
of a certain mysterious chela whom no man of the temple had ever seen.
Yes, he had followed the traces of the Blessed Feet throughout all
India. (The curator has still in his possession a most marvellous
account of his wanderings and meditations.) There remained nothing
more in life but to find the River of the Arrow. Yet it was shown to
him in dreams that it was a matter not to be undertaken with any
hope of success unless that seeker had with him the one chela
appointed to bring the event to a happy issue, and versed in great
wisdom- such wisdom as white-haired Keepers of Images possess. For
example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the kindly Jain priests
made haste to be silent):-

"Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares- let all
listen to the 'Jataka'!- an elephant was captured for a time by the
king's hunters and, ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous
leg-iron. This he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his
heart, and hurrying up and down the forests, besought his
brother-elephants to wrench it asunder. One by one, with their
strong trunks, they tried and failed. At the last they gave it as
their opinion that the ring was not to be broken by any bestial power.
And in a thicket, newborn, wet with the moisture of birth, lay a
day-old calf of the herd whose mother had died. The fettered elephant,
forgetting his own agony, said: 'If I do not help this suckling it
will perish under our feet.' So he stood above the young thing, making
his legs buttresses against the uneasily moving herd; and he begged
milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve, and the ringed elephant
was the calf's guide and defence. Now the days of an elephant- let all
listen to the 'Jataka'!- are thirty-five years to his full strength,
and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant befriended the
younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.

"Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and
turning to the elder said: 'What is this?' 'It is even my sorrow,'
said he who had befriended him. Then that other put out his trunk
and in the twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying: 'The
appointed time has come.' So the virtuous elephant who had waited
temperately and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by
the very calf whom he had turned aside to cherish- let all listen to
the 'Jataka'!- for the Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke
the ring was none other than The Lord Himself...."

Then he would shake his head benignly, and over the ever-clicking
rosary point out how free that elephant calf was from the sin of
pride. He was as humble as a chela who, seeing his master sitting in
the dust outside the Gates of Learning, overleapt the gates (though
they were locked) and took his master to his heart in the presence
of the proud-stomached city. Rich would be the reward of such a master
and such a chela when the time came for them to seek freedom together!

So did the lama speak, coming and going across India as softly as
a bat. A sharp-tongued old woman in a house among the fruit-trees
behind Saharunpore honoured him as the woman honoured the prophet, but
his chamber was by no means upon the wall. In an apartment of the
forecourt overlooked by cooing doves he would sit, while she laid
aside her useless veil and chattered of spirits and friends of Kulu,
of grandchildren unborn, and of the free-tongued brat who had talked
to her in the resting-place. Once, too, he strayed alone from the
Grand Trunk Road below Umballa to the very village whose priest had
tried to drug him, but the kind heaven that guards lamas sent him at
twilight through the crops, absorbed and unsuspicious, to the
ressaldar's door. Here was like to have been a grave misunderstanding,
for the old soldier asked him why the Friend of the Stars had gone
that way only six days before.

"That may not be," said the lama. "He has gone back to his own
people."

"He sat in that corner telling a hundred merry tales five nights
ago," his host insisted. "True, he vanished somewhat suddenly in the
dawn after foolish talk with my grand-daughter. He grows apace, but he
is the same Friend of the Stars as brought me true word of the war.
Have ye parted?"

"Yes- and no," the lama replied. "We- we have not altogether parted,
but the time is not ripe that we should take the Road together. He
acquires wisdom in another place. We must wait."

"All one- but if it were not the boy how did he come to speak so
continually of thee?"

"And what said he?" asked the lama eagerly.

"Sweet words- an hundred thousand- that thou art his father and
mother and such all. Pity that he does not take the Queen's service.
He is fearless."

This news amazed the lama, who did not then know how religiously Kim
kept to the contract made with Mahbub Ali, and perforce ratified by
Colonel Creighton....

"There is no holding the young pony from the game," said the
horse-dealer when the Colonel pointed out that vagabonding over
India in holiday time was absurd. "If permission be refused to go
and come as he chooses, he will make light of the refusal. Then who is
to catch him? Colonel Sahib, only once in a thousand years is a horse
born so well fitted for the game as this our colt. And we need men."

                              10


      Your tiercel's too long at hack, Sire. He's no eyass
      But a passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him,
      Dangerously free o' the air. Faith! were he mine
      (As mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings)
      I'd fly him with a make-hawk. He's in yarak
      Plumed to the very point- so manned so weathered...
      Give him the firmament God made him for,
      And what shall take the air of him?
                                                OLD  PLAY


Lurgan Sahib did not use as direct speech, but his advice tallied
with Mahbub's; and the upshot was good for Kim. He knew better now
than to leave Lucknow city in native garb, and if Mahbub were anywhere
within reach of a letter, it was to Mahbub's camp he headed, and
made his change under the Pathan's wary eye. Could the little Survey
paint-box that he used for map-tinting in term-time have found a
tongue to tell of holiday doings, he might have been expelled. Once
Mahbub and he went together as far as the beautiful city of Bombay,
with three truck-loads of tram-horses, and Mahbub nearly melted when
Kim proposed a sail in a dhow across the Indian Ocean to buy Gulf
Arabs, which he understood from a hanger-on of the dealer Abdul
Rahman, fetched better prices than mere Cabulis.

He dipped his hand into the dish with that great trader when
Mahbub and a few co-religionists were invited to a big Haj dinner.
They came back by way of Karachi by sea, when Kim took his first
experience of sea-sickness sitting on the fore-hatch of a
coasting-steamer, well persuaded he had been poisoned. The Babu's
famous drug-box proved useless, though Kim had restocked it at Bombay.
Mahbub had business at Quetta, and there Kim, as Mahbub admitted,
earned his keep, and perhaps a little over, by spending four curious
days as scullion in the house of a fat Commissariat sergeant, from
whose office-box, in an auspicious moment, he removed a little
vellum ledger which he copied out- it seemed to deal entirely with
cattle and camel sales- by moonlight, lying behind an outhouse, all
through one hot night. Then he returned the ledger to its place,
and, at Mahbub's word, left that service unpaid, rejoining him six
miles down the road, the clean copy in his bosom.

"That soldier is a small fish," Mahbub Ali explained, "but in time
we shall catch the larger one. He only sells oxen at two prices- one
for himself and one for the Government- which I do not think is a
sin."

"Why could not I take away the little book and be done with it?"

"Then he would have been frightened, and he would have told his
master. Then we should miss, perhaps, a great number of new rifles
which seek their way up from Quetta to the North. The Game is so large
that one sees but a little at a time."

"Oho!" said Kim, and held his tongue. That was in the monsoon
holidays, after he had taken the prize for mathematics. The
Christmas holidays he spent- deducting ten days for private
amusements- with Lurgan Sahib, where he sat for the most part in front
of a roaring wood-fire- Jakko-road was four feet deep in snow that
year- and- the small Hindu had gone away to be married- helped
Lurgan to thread pearls. He made Kim learn whole chapters of the Koran
by heart, till he could deliver them with the very roll and cadence of
a mullah. Moreover, he told Kim the names and properties of many
native drugs, as well as the runes proper to recite when you
administer them. And in the evenings he wrote charms on parchment-
elaborate pentagrams crowned with the names of devils- Murra, and Awan
the Companion of Kings- all fantastically written in the corners. More
to the point, he advised Kim as to the care of his own body, the
cure of fever-fits, and simple remedies of the Road. A week before
it was time to go down, Colonel Creighton Sahib- this was unfair- sent
Kim a written examination-paper that concerned itself solely with rods
and chains and links and angles.

Next holidays he was out with Mahbub, and here, by the way, he
nearly died of thirst, plodding through the sand on a camel to the
mysterious city of Bikaneer, where the wells are four hundred feet
deep, and lined throughout with camel-bone. It was not an amusing trip
from Kim's point of view, because- in defiance of the contract- the
Colonel ordered him to make a map of that wild, walled city; and since
Mohammedan horse-boys and pipe-tenders are not expected to drag
Survey-chains round the capital of an independent native state, Kim
was forced to pace all his distances by means of a bead rosary. He
used the compass for bearings as occasion served- after dark
chiefly, when the camels had been fed- and by the help of his little
Survey paint-box of six colour-cakes and three brushes, he achieved
something not remotely unlike the city of Jeysalmir. Mahbub laughed
a great deal and advised him to make up a written report as well;
and in the back of the big account-book that lay under the flap of
Mahbub's pet saddle Kim fell to work.

"It must hold everything that thou hast seen or touched or
considered. Write as though the Jung-i-Lat Sahib himself had come by
stealth with a vast army outsetting to war."

"How great an army?"

"Oh, half a lakh of men."

"Folly! Remember how few and bad were the wells in the sand. Not a
thousand thirsty men could come near by here."

"Then write that down- also all the old breaches in the walls- and
whence the firewood is cut- and what is the temper and disposition
of the King. I stay here till all my horses are sold. I will hire a
room by the gateway, and thou shalt be my accountant. There is a
good lock to the door."

The report in its unmistakable St. Xavier's running script, and
the brown, yellow, and lake-daubed map, was on hand a few years ago (a
careless clerk filed it with the rough notes of E.23's second
Seistan survey), but by now the pencil characters must be almost
illegible. Kim translated it, sweating under the light of an oil-lamp,
to Mahbub, the second day of their return-journey. The Pathan rose and
stooped over his dappled saddle-bags.

"I knew it would be worthy a dress of honour, and so I made one
ready," he said smiling. "Were I Amir of Afghanistan (and some day
we may see him), I would fill thy mouth with gold." He laid the
garments formally at Kim's feet. There was a gold-embroidered Peshawur
turban-cap, rising to a cone, and a big turban-cloth ending in a broad
fringe of gold. There was a Delhi embroidered waistcoat to slip over a
milky-white shirt, fastening to the right, ample and flowing; green
pyjamas with twisted silk waist-string; and that nothing might be
lacking, russia-leather slippers, smelling divinely, with arrogantly
curled tips.

"Upon a Wednesday, and in the morning, to put on new clothes is
auspicious," said Mahbub solemnly. "But we must not forget the
wicked folk in the world. So!"

He capped all the splendour, that was taking Kim's delighted
breath away, with a mother-of-pearl, nickel-plated, self-extracting
.450 revolver.

"I had thought of a smaller bore, but reflected that this takes
Government bullets. A man can always come by those- especially
across the Border. Stand up and let me look." He clapped Kim on the
shoulder. "May you never be tired, Pathan! Oh, the hearts to be
broken! Oh, the eyes under the eyelashes, looking sideways!"

Kim turned about, pointed his toes, stretched, and felt mechanically
for the moustache that was just beginning. Then he stooped towards
Mahbub's feet to make proper acknowledgement with fluttering,
quick-patting hands; his heart too full for words. Mahbub
forestalled and embraced him.

"My son," said he, "what need of words between us? But is not the
little gun a delight? All six cartridges come out at one twist. It
is borne in the bosom next the skin, which, as it were, keeps it
oiled. Never put it elsewhere, and please God, thou shalt some day
kill a man with it."

"Hai mai!" said Kim ruefully. "If a Sahib kills a man he is hung
in the jail."

"True: but one pace beyond the Border, men are wiser. Put it away;
but fill it first. Of what use is a gun unfed?"

"When I go back to the madrissah I must return it. They do not allow
little guns. Thou wilt keep it for me?"

"Son, I am wearied of that madrissah, where they take the best years
of a man to teach him what he can only learn upon the Road. The
folly of the Sahibs has neither top nor bottom. No matter. Maybe thy
written report shall save thee further bondage; and God He knows we
need men more and more in the Game."

They marched, jaw-bound against blowing sand, across the salt desert
to Jodhpore, where Mahbub and his handsome nephew Habib-Ullah did much
trading; and then sorrowfully, in European clothes, which he was
fast outgrowing, Kim went second-class to St. Xavier's. Three weeks
later, Colonel Creighton, pricing Tibetan ghost-daggers at Lurgan's
shop, faced Mahbub Ali openly mutinous. Lurgan Sahib operated as
support in reserve.

"The pony is made- finished- mouthed and paced, Sahib! From now
on, day by day, he will lose his manners if he is kept at tricks. Drop
the rein on his back and let go," said the horse-dealer. "We need
him."

"But he is so young, Mahbub- not more than sixteen- is he?"

"When I was fifteen, I had shot my man and begot my man, Sahib."

"You impenitent old heathen." Creighton turned to Lurgan. The
black beard nodded assent to the wisdom of the Afghan's dyed scarlet.

"I should have used him long ago," said Lurgan. The younger the
better. That is why I always have my really valuable jewels watched by
a child. You sent him to me to try. I tried him in every way: he is
the only boy I could not make to see things."

"In the crystal- in the ink-pool?" demanded Mahbub.

"No. Under my hand, as I told you. That has never happened before.
It means that he is strong enough- but you think it skittles,
Colonel Creighton- to make anyone do anything he wants. And that is
three years ago. I have taught him a good deal since, Colonel
Creighton. I think you waste him now."

"Hmm! Maybe you're right. But, as you know, there is no Survey
work for him at present."

"Let him out- let him go," Mahbub interrupted. "Who expects any colt
to carry heavy weight at first? Let him run with the caravans like our
white camel-colts- for luck. I would take him myself, but- "

"There is a little business where he would be most useful- in the
South," said Lurgan, with peculiar suavity, dropping his heavy nude
eyelids.

"E.23 has that in hand," said Creighton quickly. "He must not go
down there. Besides, he knows no Turki."

"Only tell him the shape and the smell of the letters we want and he
will bring them back," Lurgan insisted.

"No. That is a man's job," said Creighton.

It was a wry-necked matter of unauthorised and incendiary
correspondence between a person who claimed to be the ultimate
authority in all matters of the Mohammedan religion throughout the
world, and a younger member of a royal house who had been brought to
book for kidnapping women within British territory. The Moslem
Archbishop had been emphatic and over-arrogant; the young prince was
merely sulky at the curtailment of his privileges, but there was no
need he should continue a correspondence which might some day
compromise him. One letter indeed had been procured, but the finder
was later found dead by the roadside in the habit of an Arab trader,
as E.23, taking up the work, duly reported.

These facts, and a few others not to be published, made both
Mahbub and Creighton shake their heads.

"Let him go out with his Red Lama," said the horse-dealer with
visible effort. "He is fond of the old man. He can learn his paces
by the rosary at least."

"I have had some dealings with the old man- by letter," said Colonel
Creighton, smiling to himself. "Whither goes he?"

"Up and down the land, as he has these three years. He seeks a River
of Healing. God's curse upon all- " Mahbub checked himself. "He beds
down at the Temple of the Tirthankers or at Buddh Gaya when he is in
from the Road. Then he goes to see the boy at the madrissah as we
know, for the boy was punished for it twice or thrice. He is quite
mad, but a peaceful man. I have met him. The Babu also has had
dealings with him. We have watched him for three years. Red Lamas
are not so common in Hind that one loses track."

"Babus are very curious," said Lurgan meditatively. "Do you know
what Hurree Babu really wants? He wants to be made a member of the
Royal Society by taking ethnological notes. I tell you, I tell him
about the lama everything that Mahbub and the boy have told me. Hurree
Babu goes down to Benares- at his own expense, I think."

"I don't," said Creighton briefly. He had paid Hurree's travelling
expenses, out of a most lively curiosity to learn what the lama
might be.

"And he applies to the lama for information on lamaism, and devil
dances, and spells and charms, several times in these few years.
Holy Virgin! I could have told him all that yee-ars ago. I think
Hurree Babu is getting too old for the Road. He likes better to
collect manners and customs information. Yes, he wants to be an F.
R. S."

"Hurree thinks well of the boy, doesn't he?"

"Oh, very indeed- we have had some pleasant evenings at my little
place- but I think it would be waste to throw him away with Hurree
on the ethnological side."

"Not for a first experience. How does that strike you, Mahbub? Let
the boy run with the lama for six months. After that we can see. He
will get experience."

"He has it already, Sahib- as a fish controls the water he swims in;
but for every reason it will be well to loose him from the school."

"Very good, then," said Creighton, half to himself. "He can go
with the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much
the better. He won't lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would.
Curious- his wish to be an F. R. S. Very human, too. He is best on the
ethnological side- Hurree."

No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his
work on the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay an
ambition to write "F. R. S." after his name. Honours of a sort he knew
could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the
best of his belief, nothing save work- papers representing a life of
it- took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years
with monographs on strange Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men
out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soiree in extremity of
boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned
for the crowded rooms in easy London where silver-haired,
bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among
spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras,
electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into
fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. By all
right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that should have
appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice
of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree
Babu, moved by like desires.

He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub.

"How soon can we get the colt from the stable?" said the
horse-dealer, reading his eyes.

"Hmm. If I withdraw him by order now- what will he do, think you?
I have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one."

"He will come to me," said Mahbub promptly. "Lurgan Sahib and I will
prepare him for the Road."

"So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice: but
who will be his sponsor?"

Lurgan slightly inclined his head. "He will not tell anything, if
that is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton."

"It's only a boy, after all."

"Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows
what would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a
little."

"Will he draw pay?" demanded the practical horse-dealer.

"Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month."

One advantage of the Secret Service is that it has no worrying
audit. The service is ludicrously starved, of course, but the funds
are administered by a few men who do not call for vouchers or
present itemised accounts. Mahbub's eyes lighted with almost a
Sikh's love of money. Even Lurgan's impassive face changed. He
considered the years to come when Kim would have been entered and made
to the Great Game that never ceases day and night, throughout India.
He foresaw honour and credit in the mouths of a chosen few, coming
to him from his pupil. Lurgan Sahib had made E.23 what E.23 was, out
of a bewildered, impertinent, lying, little North-West Province man.

But the joy of these masters was pale and smoky beside the joy of
Kim when St. Xavier's Head called him aside, with word that Colonel
Creighton had sent for him.

"I understand, O'Hara, that he has found you a place as an assistant
chain-man in the Canal Department: that comes of taking up
mathematics. It is great luck for you, for you are only seventeen; but
of course you understand that you do not become pukka (permanent) till
you have passed the autumn examination. So you must not think you
are going out into the world to enjoy yourself, or that your fortune
is made. There is a great deal of hard work before you. Only, if you
in becoming pukka, you can rise, you know, to four hundred and fifty a
month." Whereat the Principal gave him much good advice as to his
conduct, and his manners, and his morals; and others, his elders,
who had not been wafted into billets, talked, as only Anglo-Indian
lads can, of favouritism and corruption. Indeed, young Cazalet,
whose father was a pensioner at Chunar, hinted very broadly that
Colonel Creighton's interest in Kim was directly paternal; and Kim,
instead of retaliating, did not even use language. He was thinking
of the immense fun to come, of Mahbub's letter of the day before,
all neatly written in English, making appointment for that afternoon
in a house the very name of which would have crisped the Principal's
hair with horror....

Said Kim to Mahbub in Lucknow railway station that evening, above
the luggage-scales- "I feared lest, at the last, the roof would fall
upon me and cheat me. Is it indeed all finished, O my father?"

Mahbub snapped his fingers to show the utterness of that end, and
his eyes blazed like red coals.

"Then where is the pistol that I may wear it?"

"Softly! A half-year, to run without heel-ropes. I begged that
much from Colonel Creighton Sahib. At twenty rupees a month. Old Red
Hat knows that thou art coming."

"I will pay thee dustoorie (commission) on my pay for three months,"
said Kim gravely. "Yea, two rupees a month. But first we must get
rid of these." He plucked his thin linen trousers and dragged at his
collar. "I have brought with me all that I need on the Road. My
trunk has gone up to Lurgan Sahib's."

"Who sends his salaams to thee- Sahib."

"Lurgan Sahib is a very clever man. But what dost thou do?"

"I go North again, upon the Great Game. What else? Is thy mind still
set on following old Red Hat?"

"Do not forget he made me what I am- though he did not know it. Year
by year, he sent the money that taught me."

"I would have done as much- had it struck my thick head," Mahbub
growled. "Come away. The lamps are lit now, and none will mark thee in
the bazar. We go to Huneefa's house."

On the way thither, Mahbub gave him much the same sort of advice
as his mother gave to Lemuel, and curiously enough, Mahbub was exact
to point out how Huneefa and her likes destroyed kings.

"And I remember," he quoted maliciously, "one who said, 'Trust a
snake before a harlot and a harlot before a Pathan, Mahbub Ali.'
Now, excepting as to Pathans, of whom I am one, all that is true. Most
true is it in the Great Game, for it is by means of woman that all
plans come to ruin and we lie out in dawning with our throats cut.
So it happened to such a one"- he gave the reddest particulars.

"Then why- ?" Kim paused before a filthy staircase that climbed to
the warm darkness of an upper chamber in the ward that is behind
Azim Ullah's tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Bird-cage- it
is so full of whisperings and whistlings and chirrupings.

The room, with its dirty cushions and half-smoked hookahs, smelt
abominably of stale tobacco. In one corner lay a huge and shapeless
woman clad in greenish gauzes, and decked, brow, nose, ear, neck,
wrist, arm, waist, and ankle, with heavy native jewellery. When she
turned it was like the clashing of copper pots. A lean cat in the
balcony outside the window mewed hungrily. Kim checked, bewildered, at
the door-curtain.

"Is that the new stuff, Mahbub?" said Huneefa lazily, scarce
troubling to remove the mouthpiece from her lips. "O Buktanoos!"- like
most of her kind, she swore by the Djinns- "O Buktanoos! He is very
good to look upon."

"That is part of the selling of the horse," Mahbub explained to Kim,
who laughed.

"I have heard that talk since my Sixth Day," he replied, squatting
by the light. "Whither does it lead?"

"To protection. To-night we change thy colour. This sleeping under
roofs has blanched thee like an almond. But Huneefa has the secret
of a colour that catches. No painting of a day or two. Also, we
fortify thee against the chances of the Road. That is my gift to thee,
my son. Take out all metals on thee and lay them here. Make ready,
Huneefa."

Kim dragged forth his compass, Survey paint-box, and the
new-filled medicine-box. They had all accompanied his travels, and
boy-like he valued them immensely.

The woman rose slowly and moved with her hands a little spread
before her. Then Kim saw that she was blind. "No, no," she muttered,
"the Pathan speaks truth- my colour does not go in a week or a
month, and those whom I protect are under strong guard."

"When one is far off and alone, it would not be well to grow
blotched and leprous of a sudden," said Mahbub. "When thou wast with
me I could oversee the matter. Besides, a Pathan is a fair-skin. Strip
to the waist now and look how thou art whitened." Huneefa felt her way
back from an inner room. "It is no matter, she cannot see." He took
a pewter bowl from her ringed hand.

The dye-stuff showed blue and gummy. Kim experimented on the back of
his wrist, with a dab of cotton wool; but Huneefa heard him.

"No, no," she cried, "the thing is not done thus, but with the
proper ceremonies. The colouring is the least part. I give thee the
full protection of the Road."

"Jadoo?" (magic), said Kim, with a half start. He did not like the
white, sightless eyes. Mahbub's hand on his neck bowed him to the
floor, nose within an inch of the boards.

"Be still. No harm comes to thee, my son. I am thy sacrifice!"

He could not see what the woman was about, but heard the clish-clash
of her jewellery for many minutes. A match lit up the darkness; he
caught the well-known purr and fizzle of grains of incense. Then the
room filled with smoke- heavy, aromatic, and stupefying. Through
growing drowse he heard the names of devils- of Zulbazan, Son of
Eblis, who lives in bazars and paraos, making all the sudden lewd
wickedness of wayside halts; of Dulhan, invisible about mosques, the
dweller among the slippers of the Faithful, who hinders folk from
their prayers; and Musboot, Lord of lies and panic. Huneefa, now
whispering in his ear, now talking as from an immense distance,
touched him with horrible soft fingers, but Mahbub's grip never
shifted from his neck till relaxing with a sigh, the boy lost his
senses.

"Allah! How he fought! We should never have done it but for the
drugs. That was his White blood, I take it," said Mahbub testily.
"Go on with the dawut (invocation). Give him full Protection."

"O Hearer! Thou that hearest with ears, be present. Listen, O
Hearer!" Huneefa moaned, her dead eyes turned to the west. The dark
room filled with moanings and snortings.

From the outer balcony, a ponderous figure raised a round bullet
head and coughed nervously.

"Do not interrupt this ventriloquial necromanciss, my friend," it
said in English. "I opine that it is very disturbing to you, but no
enlightened observer is jolly well upset."

"...I will lay a plot for their ruin! O Prophet, bear with the
unbelievers. Let them alone awhile!" Huneefa's face, turned to the
northward, worked horribly, and it was as though voices from the
ceiling answered her.

Hurree Babu returned to his note-book, balanced on the
window-sill, but his hand shook. Huneefa, in some sort of drugged
ecstasy, wrenched herself to and fro as she sat cross-legged by
Kim's still head, and called upon devil after devil in the ancient
order of the ritual, binding them to avoid the boy's every action.

"With Him are the keys of the Secret Things! None knoweth them
beside Himself. He knoweth that which is in the dry land and in the
sea!" Again broke out the unearthly whistling responses.

"I- I apprehend it is not at all malignant in its operation?" said
the Babu, watching the throat-muscles quiver and jerk as Huneefa spoke
with tongues. "It- it is not likely that she has killed the boy? If
so, I decline to be witness at the trial... What was the last
hypothetical devil mentioned?"

"Babuji," said Mahbub in the vernacular. "I have no regard for the
devils of Hind, but the Sons of Eblis are far otherwise, and whether
they be jumalee (well-affected) or jullalee (terrible) they love not
Kafirs."

"Then you think I had better go?" said Hurree Babu, half rising.
"They are, of course, dematerialised phenomena. Spencer says- "

Huneefa's crisis passed, as these things must, in a paroxysm of
howling, with a touch of froth at the lips. She lay spent and
motionless beside Kim, and the crazy voices ceased.

"Wah! That work is done. May the boy be better for it; and Huneefa
is surely a mistress of dawut. Help haul her aside, Babu. Do not be
afraid."

"How am I to fear the absolutely non-existent?" said Hurree Babu,
talking English to reassure himself. It is an awful thing still to
dread the magic that you contemptuously investigate- to collect
folk-lore for the Royal Society with a lively belief in all Powers
of Darkness.

Mahbub chuckled. He had been out with Hurree on the Road ere now.
"Let us finish the colouring," said he. "The boy is well protected if-
if the Lords of the Air have ears to hear. I am a sufi (free-thinker),
but when one can get blindsides of a woman, a stallion, or a devil,
why go round to invite a kick? Set him upon the way, Babu, and see
that old Red Hat does not lead him beyond our reach. I must get back
to my horses."

"All raight," said Hurree Babu. "He is at present a curious
spectacle."


About third cockcrow, Kim woke after a sleep of thousands of
years. Huneefa, in her corner, snored heavily, but Mahbub was gone.

"I hope you were not frightened," said an oily voice at his elbow.
"I superintended entire operation, which was most interesting from
ethnological point of view. It was high-class dawut."

"Huh!" said Kim, recognising Hurree Babu, who smiled ingratiatingly.

"And also I had honour to bring down from Lurgan your present
costume. I am not in the habit offeecially of carrying such gauds to
subordinates, but"- he giggled- "your case is noted as exceptional
on the books. I hope Mr. Lurgan will note my action."

Kim yawned and stretched himself. It was good to turn and twist
within loose clothes once again.

"What is this?" He looked curiously at the heavy duffle-stuff loaded
with the scents of the far North.

"Oho! That is inconspicuous dress of chela attached to service of
lamaistic lama. Com-plete in every particular," said Hurree Babu,
rolling into the balcony to clean his teeth at a goglet. "I am of
opeenion it is not your old gentleman's precise religion, but rather
sub-variant of same. I have contributed rejected notes to 'Asiatic
Quarterly Review' on these subjects. Now it is curious that the old
gentleman himself is totally devoid of religiosity. He is not a dam
particular."

"Do you know him?"

Hurree Babu held up his hand to show he was engaged in the
prescribed rites that accompany tooth-cleaning and such things among
decently bred Bengalis. Then he recited in English an Arya-Somaj
prayer of a theistical nature, and stuffed his mouth with pan and
betel.

"Oah yes. I have met him several times at Benares, and also at Buddh
Gaya, to interrogate him on religious points and devil-worship. He
is pure agnostic- same as me."

Huneefa stirred in her sleep, and Hurree Babu jumped nervously to
the copper incense-burner, all black and discoloured in morning-light,
rubbed a finger in the accumulated lampblack, and drew it diagonally
across his face.

"Who has died in thy house?" asked Kim in the vernacular.

"None. But she may have the Evil Eye- that sorceress," the Babu
replied.

"What dost thou do now, then?"

"I will set thee on thy way to Benares, if thou goest thither, and
tell thee what must be known by Us."

"I go. At what hour runs the te-rain?" He rose to his feet, looked
round the desolate chamber and at the yellow-wax face of Huneefa as
the low sun stole across the floor. "Is there money to be paid that
witch?"

"No. She has charmed thee against all devils and all dangers- in the
name of her devils. It was Mahbub's desire." In English: "He is highly
obsolete, I think, to indulge in such supersteetion. Why, it is all
ventrilo-quy. Belly-speak- eh?"

Kim snapped his fingers mechanically to avert whatever evil- Mahbub,
he knew, meditated none- might have crept in through Huneefa's
ministrations; and Hurree giggled once more. But as he crossed the
room he was careful not to step in Huneefa's blotched, squat shadow on
the boards. Witches- when their time is on them- can lay hold of the
heels of a man's soul if he does that.

"Now you must well listen," said the Babu when they were in the
fresh air. "Part of these ceremonies which we witnessed they include
supply of effeecient amulet to those of our Department. If you feel in
your neck you will find one small silver amulet, verree cheap. That is
ours. Do you understand?"

"Oah yes, hawa-dilli" (a heart-lifter), said Kim, feeling at his
neck.

"Huneefa she makes them for two rupees twelve annas with- oh, all
sorts of exorcisms. They are quite common, except they are partially
black enamel, and there is a paper inside each one full of names of
local saints and such things. Thatt is Huneefa's look-out, you see?
Huneefa makes them onlee for us, but in case she does not, when we get
them we put in, before issue, one small piece of turquoise. Mr.
Lurgan, he gives them. There is no other source of supply; but it
was me invented all this. It is strictly unoffeecial of course, but
convenient for subordinates. Colonel Creighton he does not know. He is
European. The turquoise is wrapped in the paper.... Yes, that is
road to railway station....  Now suppose you go with the lama, or with
me, I hope, some day, or with Mahbub. Suppose we get into a
dam-tight place. I am a fearful man- most fearful- but I tell you I
have been in dam-tight places more than hairs on my head. You say:
'I am Son of the Charm.' Verree good."

"I do not understand quite. We must not be heard talking English
here."

"That is all raight. I am only Babu showing off my English to you.
All we Babus talk English to show off," said Hurree, flinging his
shoulder-cloth jauntily. "As I was about to say, 'Son of the Charm'
means that you may be member of the Sat Bhai- the Seven Brothers,
which is Hindi and Tantric. It is popularly supposed to be extinct
society, but I have written notes to show it is still extant. You
see it is all my invention. Verree good. Sat Bhai has many members,
and perhaps before they jolly-well-cut-your-throat they may give you
just a chance for life. That is useful, anyhow. And, moreover, these
fooolish natives- if they are not too excited- they always stop to
think before they kill a man who says he belongs to any specific
organisation. You see? You say then when you are in tight place, 'I am
Son of the Charm,' and you get- perhaps- ah- your second wind. That is
only in extreme instances, or to open negotiations with a stranger.
Can you quite see? Verree good. But suppose now, I, or anyone of the
Department, come to you dressed quite different. You would not know me
at all unless I choose, I bet you. Some day I will prove it. I come as
Ladakhi trader- oh anything- and I say to you: 'You want to buy
precious stones?' You say: 'Do I look like a man who buys precious
stones?' Then I say: 'Even verree poor man can buy a turquoise or
tarkeean.'"

"That is kichree- vegetable curry," said Kim.

"Of course it is. You say: 'Let me see the tarkeean.' Then I say:
'It was cooked by a woman, and perhaps it is bad for your caste.' Then
you say: 'There is no caste when men go to- look for tarkeean.' You
stop a little between those words, 'to- look.' That is thee whole
secret. The little stop before the words."

Kim repeated the test-sentence.

"That is all right. Then I will show you my turquoise if there is
time, and then you know who I am, and then we exchange views and
documents and those-all things. And so it is with any other man of us.
We talk sometimes about turquoises and sometimes about tarkeean, but
always with that little stop in the words. It is verree easy. First,
'Son of the Charm,' if you are in a tight place. Perhaps that may help
you- perhaps not. Then what I have told you about the tarkeean, if you
want to transact offeecial business with a strange man. Of course,
at present, you have no offeecial business. You are- ah ha!-
supernumerary on probation. Quite unique specimen. If you were Asiatic
of birth you might be employed right off; but this half-year of
leave is to make you de-Englishised, you see? The lama, he expects
you, because I have demi-offeecially informed him you have passed
all your examinations, and will soon obtain Government appointment. Oh
ho! You are on acting-allowance you see: so if you are called upon
to help Sons of the Charm mind you jolly well try. Now I shall say
good-bye, my dear fellow, and I hope you- ah- will come out top-side
all raight."

"Hurree Babu stepped back a pace or two into the crowd at the
entrance of Lucknow station and- was gone. Kim drew a deep breath
and hugged himself all over. The nickel-plated revolver he could
feel in the bosom of his sad-coloured robe, the amulet was on his
neck; begging-gourd, rosary, and ghost-dagger (Mr. Lurgan had
forgotten nothing) were all to hand, with medicine, paint-box, and
compass, and in a worn old purse-belt embroidered with porcupine
quill-patterns lay a month's pay. Kings could be no richer. He
bought sweetmeats in a leaf-cup from a Hindu trader, and ate them with
glad rapture till a policeman ordered him off the steps.

                                11


                Give the man who is not made
                      To his trade
                Swords to fling and catch again,
                Coins to ring and snatch again,
                Men to harm and cure again,
                Snakes to charm and lure again-
                He'll be hurt by his own blade,
                By his serpents disobeyed,
                By his clumsiness bewrayed,
                By the people mocked to scorn.
                   So 'tis not with juggler born.
                Pinch of dust or withered flower,
                   Chance-flung fruit or borrowed staff,
                Serve his need and shore his power,
                   Bind the spell, or loose the laugh!

                      " BUT  A  MAN  WHO,  ETC., " OP.  15


Followed a sudden natural reaction.

"Now am I alone- all alone," he thought. "In all India is no one
so alone as I! If I die to-day, who shall bring the news- and to whom?
If I live and God is good, there will be a price upon my head, for I
am a Son of the Charm- I, Kim."

A very few white people, but many Asiatics, can throw themselves
into a mazement as it were by repeating their own names over and
over again to themselves, letting the mind go free upon speculation as
to what is called personal identity. When one grows older, the
power, usually, departs, but while it lasts it may descend upon a
man at any moment.

"Who is Kim- Kim- Kim?"

He squatted in a corner of the clanging waiting-room, rapt from
all other thoughts; hands folded in lap, and pupils contracted to
pin-points. In a minute- in another half second- he felt he would
arrive at the solution of the tremendous puzzle; but here, as always
happens, his mind dropped away from those heights with the rush of a
wounded bird, and passing his hand before his eyes, he shook his head.

A long-haired Hindu bairagi (holy man), who had just bought a
ticket, halted before him at that moment and stared intently.

"I also have lost it," he said sadly. "It is one of the Gates to the
Way, but for me it has been shut many years."

"What is the talk?" said Kim, abashed.

"Thou wast wondering there in thy spirit what manner of thing thy
soul might be. The seizure came of a sudden. I know. Who should know
but I? Whither goest thou?"

"Toward Kashi" (Benares).

"There are no Gods there. I have proved them. I go to Prayag
(Allahabad) for the fifth time- seeking the road to Enlightenment.
Of what faith art thou?"

"I too am a Seeker," said Kim, using one of the lama's pet words.
"Though"- he forgot his Northern dress for the moment- "though Allah
alone knoweth what I seek."

The old fellow slipped the bairagi's crutch under his armpit and sat
down on a patch of ruddy leopard's skin as Kim rose at the call for
the Benares train.

"Go in hope, little brother," he said. "It is a long road to the
feet of the One; but thither do we all travel."

Kim did not feel so lonely after this, and ere he had sat out twenty
miles in the crowded compartment, was cheering his neighbours with a
string of most wonderful yarns about his own and his master's
magical gifts.

Benares struck him as a peculiarly filthy city, though it was
pleasant to find how his cloth was respected. At least one-third of
the population prays eternally to some group or other of the many
million deities, and so revere every sort of holy man. Kim was
guided to the Temple of the Tirthankers, about a mile outside the
city, near Sarnath, by a chance-met Panjabi farmer- a Kamboh from
Jullundur-way who had appealed in vain to every God of his homestead
to cure his small son, and was trying Benares as a last resort.

"Thou art from the North?" he asked, shouldering through the press
of the narrow, stinking streets much like his own pet bull at home.

"Ay, I know the Punjab. My mother was a Pahareen, but my father came
from Amritzar- by Jandiala," said Kim, oiling his ready tongue for the
needs of the Road.

"Jandiala- Jullundur? Oho! Then we be neighbours in some sort, as it
were." He nodded tenderly to the wailing child in his arms. "Whom dost
thou serve?"

"A most holy man at the Temple of the Tirthankers."

"They are all most holy and- most greedy," said the Jat with
bitterness. "I have walked the pillars and trodden the temples till my
feet are flayed, and the child is no whit better. And the mother being
sick too.... Hush, then, little one.... We changed his name when the
fever came. We put him into girl's clothes. There was nothing we did
not do, except- I said to his mother when she bundled me off to
Benares- she should have come with me- I said Sakhi Sarwar Sultan
would serve us best. We know His generosity, but these down-country
Gods are strangers."

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked
at Kim through heavy eyelids.

"And was it all worthless?" Kim asked, with easy interest.

"All worthless- all worthless," said the child, lips cracking with
fever.

"The Gods have given him a good mind, at least," said the father
proudly. "To think he should have listened so cleverly. Yonder is
thy temple. Now I am a poor man- many priests have dealt with me-
but my son is my son, and if a gift to thy master can cure him- I am
at my very wits' end."

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago
he would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way
without a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved
that he was a man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice
already, and knew enough to recognise starvation when he saw it.

"Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so
that the child is cured."

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A white-clad
Oswal banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him
what he did.

"I am chela to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal- within there.
He bade me come. I wait. Tell him."

"Do not forget the child," cried the importunate Jat over his
shoulder, and then bellowed in Punjabi: "O Holy One- O disciple of the
Holy One- O Gods above all the Worlds- behold affliction sitting at
the gate!" That cry is so common in Benares that the passers never
turned their heads.

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the
darkness behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid
by; for the lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him.
When the click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court
where the calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered, "Thy
chela is here," and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of
that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran
before him, and, lifting up the child, cried: "Look upon this, Holy
One; and if the Gods will, he lives- he lives!"

He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin.

"What is now?" The lama's eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he
spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under Zam-Zammah; but the father
would allow no private talk.

"It is no more than a fever," said Kim. "The child is not well fed."

"He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here."

"If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One."

"What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here," said the lama,
and he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while
Kim, looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little
betel-box. He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as
a Sahib- of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself- boy's
dreams all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered
search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for
thought and a muttered invocation between whiles. Quinine he had in
tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges- beef most probably, but that
was not his business. The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at
a lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

"Take then these six." Kim handed them to the man. "Praise the Gods,
and boil three in milk; other three in water. After he has drunk the
milk give him this (it was the half of a quinine pill), and wrap him
warm. Give him the water of the other three, and the other half of
this white pill when he wakes. Meantime, here is another brown
medicine that he may suck at on the way home.

"Gods, what wisdom!" said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a
bout of autumn malaria- if you except the patter that he added to
impress the lama.

"Now go! Come again in the morning."

"But the price- the price," said the Jat, and threw back his
sturdy shoulders. "My son is my son. Now that he will be whole
again, how shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the
wayside and did not even give a bowl of curds in return?"

"They are alike, these Jats," said Kim softly. "The Jat stood on his
dunghill and the King's elephants went by. 'O driver,' said he,
'what will you sell those little donkeys for?'"

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the
lama. "It is the saying of my own country- the very talk of it. So are
we Jats all. I will come to-morrow with the child; and the blessing of
the Gods of the Homesteads- who are good little Gods- be on you
both.... Now, son, we grow strong again. Do not spit it out, little
Princeling! King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be
strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning."

He moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and
all the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

"To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.
That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World."

"I was made wise by thee, Holy One," said Kim, forgetting the little
play just ended; forgetting St. Xavier's; forgetting his white
blood; forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan
fashion, to touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple.
"My teaching I owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years. My
time is finished. I am loosed from the schools. I come to thee."

"Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?" They passed to
the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across.
"Stand that I may see. So!" He peered critically. "It is no longer a
child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did
well- I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black
night. Dost thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?"

"Ay." said Kim. "Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage
the first day I went to- "

"The Gates of Learning? Truly. And the day that we ate the cakes
together at the back of the river by Nucklao. Aha! Many times hast
thou begged for me, but that day I begged for thee."

"Good reason," quoth Kim. "I was then a scholar in the Gates of
Learning, and attired as a Sahib. Do not forget, Holy One," he went on
playfully, "I am still a Sahib- by thy favour."

"True. And a Sahib in most high esteem. Come to my cell, chela."

"How is that known to thee?"

The lama smiled. "First by means of letters from the kindly priest
whom we met in the camp of armed priest but he is now gone to his
own country, and I sent the money to his brother." Colonel
Creighton, who had succeeded to the trusteeship when Father Victor
went to England with the Mavericks, was hardly the chaplain's brother.
"But I do not well understand Sahibs' letters. They must be
interpreted to me. I chose a surer way. Many times when I returned
from my Search to this temple, which has always been a nest to me,
there came one seeking Enlightenment- a man from Leh- that had been,
he said, a Hindu, but wearied of all those Gods." The lama pointed
to the Arhats.

"A fat man?" said Kim, a twinkle in his eye.

"Very fat; but I perceived in a little his mind was wholly given
up to useless things- such as devils and charms and the form and
fashion of our tea-drinkings in the monasteries, and by what road we
initiated the novices. A man abounding in questions; but he was a
friend of thine, chela. He told me that thou wast on the road to
much honour as a scribe. And I see thou art a physician."

"Yes, that am I- a scribe, when I am a Sahib, but it is set aside
when I come as thy disciple. I have accomplished the years appointed
for a Sahib."

"As it were a novice?" said the lama, nodding his head. "Art thou
freed from the schools? I would not have thee unripe."

"I am all free. In due time I take service under the Government as a
scribe- "

"Not as a warrior. That is well."

"But first I come to wander- with thee. Therefore I am here. Who
begs for thee, these days?" he went on quickly. The ice was thin.

"Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here,
except when I come to look again at my disciple. From one end to
another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain. A great and
a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were in my
own Bhotiyal."

He looked round the little clean cell complacently. A low cushion
gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the
cross-legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a
black teak-wood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper
tea-cups, was before him. In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of
heavily carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated
Buddha and fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of
copper flowerpots.

"The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by
giving me these a year since," he said, following Kim's eyes. "When
one is far from one's own land such things carry remembrance; and we
must reverence the Lord for that He showed the Way. See!" He pointed
to a curiously-built mound of coloured rice crowned with a fantastic
metal ornament. "When I was abbot in my own place- before I came to
better knowledge- I made that offering daily. It is the Sacrifice of
the Universe to the Lord. Thus do we of Bhotiyal offer all the world
daily to the Excellent Law. And I do it even now, though I know that
the Excellent One is beyond all pinchings and pattings." He snuffed
from his gourd.

"It is well done, Holy One," Kim murmured, sinking at ease on the
cushions, very happy and rather tired.

"And also," the old man chuckled, "I write pictures of the Wheel
of Life. Three days to a picture. I was busied on it- or it may be I
shut my eyes a little- when they brought word of thee. It is good to
have thee here: I will show thee my art- not for pride's sake, but
because thou must learn. The Sahibs have not all this world's wisdom."

He drew from under the table a sheet of strangely scented yellow
Chinese paper, the brushes, and slab of India ink. In cleanest,
severest outline he had traced the Great Wheel with its six spokes,
whose centre is the conjoined Hog, Snake, and Dove (Ignorance,
Anger, and Lust), and whose compartments are all the heavens and
hells, and all the chances of human life. Men say that the Bodhisat
Himself first drew it with grains of rice upon dust, to teach His
disciples the cause of things. Many ages have crystalized it into a
most wonderful convention crowded with hundreds of little figures
whose every line carries a meaning. Few can translate the
picture-parable; there are not twenty in all the world who can draw it
surely without a copy: of those who can both draw and expound are
but three.

"I have a little learned to draw," said Kim. "But this is a marvel
beyond marvels."

"I have written it for many years," said the lama. "Time was when
I could write it all between one lamp-lighting and the next. I will
teach thee the art- after due preparation; and I will show thee the
meaning of the Wheel."

"We take the Road, then?"

"The Road and our Search. I was but waiting for thee. It was made
plain to me in a hundred dreams- notably one that came upon the
night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut- that without
thee I should never find my River. Again and again, as thou knowest, I
put this from me, fearing an illusion. Therefore I would not take thee
with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes. I would not take
thee till the time was ripe and auspicious. From the Hills to the Sea,
from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain. Then I
remembered the 'Jataka.'"

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had
told it so often to the Jain priests.

"Further testimony is not needed," he ended serenely. "Thou wast
sent for an aid. That aid removed, my Search came to naught. Therefore
we will go out again together, and our Search is sure."

"Whither go we?"

"What matters, Friend of all the World? The Search, I say, is
sure. If need be, the River will break from the ground before us. I
acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave
thee the jewel that is Wisdom. Thou didst return, I saw even now, a
follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in
Bhotiyal. It is sufficient. We are together, and all things are as
they were- Friend of all the World- Friend of the Stars- my chela!"

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that
the lama never demanded any details of life at St. Xavier's, nor
showed the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs.
His mind moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their
wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling,
till it pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old
age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and
played with his ghost-dagger and rosary. The clamour of Benares,
oldest of all earth's cities awake before the Gods, day and night,
beat round the walls as the sea's roar round a breakwater. Now and
again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to
the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should take
the life of a living thing. A lamp twinkled, and there followed the
sound of a prayer. Kim watched the stars as they rose one after
another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot
of the altar. That night he dreamed in Hindustanee, with never an
English word....

"Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine," he
said, about three o'clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking
from dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage. "The Jat will be
here at the light."

"I am well answered. In my haste I would have done a wrong." He
sat down on the cushions and returned to his rosary. "Surely old
folk are as children," he said pathetically. "They desire a matter-
behold, it must be done at once, or they fret and weep! Many times
when I was upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at
the hindrance of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust. It
was not so when I was a man- a long time ago. None the less it is
wrongful- "

"But thou art indeed old, Holy One."

"The thing was done. A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or
young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect
of that Cause? Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it- or a
drunkard? Chela, this is a great and a terrible world."

"I think it good," Kim yawned. "What is there to eat? I have not
eaten since yesterday even."

"I had forgotten thy need. Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold
rice."

"We cannot walk far on such stuff." Kim felt all the European's lust
for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple. Yet, instead
of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on
slabs of cold rice till the full dawn. It brought the farmer, voluble,
stuttering with gratitude.

"In the night the fever broke and the sweat came," he cried. "Feel
here- his skin is fresh and new! He esteemed the salt lozenges, and
took milk with greed." He drew the cloth from the child's face, and it
smiled sleepily at Kim. A little knot of Jain priests, silent but
all-observant, gathered by the temple door. They knew, and Kim knew
that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple. Being courteous
folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or
gesture. Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

"Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother," he said, not knowing how
those Gods were named. "The fever is indeed broken."

"Look! See!" The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of
three years. "Was there ever such a chela? He follows our Lord the
Healer."

Now the Jains officially recognise all the Gods of the Hindu
creed, as well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the
Brahminical thread; they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law.
But, because they knew and loved the lama, because he was an old
man, because he sought the Way, because he was their guest, and
because he collogued long of nights with the head-priest- as
free-thinking a metaphysician as ever split one hair into seventy-
they murmured assent.

"Remember"- Kim bent over the child- "this trouble may come again."

"Not if thou hast the proper spell," said the father.

"But in a little while we go away.

"True," said the lama to all the Jains. "We go now together upon the
Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my chela was ripe.
Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of
my rest, O people of good will."

"But I am not a beggar." The cultivator rose to his feet,
clutching the child.

"Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One," a priest cried.

"Go," Kim whispered. Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and
for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food- curry,
pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be
swift!"

The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and
slim, in his sad-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary
and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from
the lama. An English observer might have said that he looked rather
like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a
growing lad faint with emptiness.

Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed.
The Seeker- he who had invited the lama to that haven from far-away
Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic- took no part in it, but
meditated, as always, alone among the images. The others were very
human; pressing small comforts upon the old man- a betel-box, a fine
new iron pencase, a food-bag, and such like- warning him against the
dangers of the world without, and prophesying a happy end to the
Search. Meantime Kim, lonelier than ever, squatted on the steps, and
swore to himself in the language of St. Xavier's.

"But it is my own fault," he concluded. "With Mahbub, I ate Mahbub's
bread, or Lurgan Sahib's. At St. Xavier's, three meals a day. Here I
must jolly well look out for myself. Besides, I am not in good
training. How I could eat a plate of beef now!... Is it finished, Holy
One?"

The lama, both hands raised, intoned a final blessing in ornate
Chinese. "I must lean on thy shoulder," said he, as the temple-gates
closed. "We grow stiff, I think."

The weight of a six-foot man is not light to steady through miles of
crowded streets, and Kim, loaded down with bundles and packages for
the way, was glad to reach the shadow of the railway bridge.

"Here we eat," he said resolutely, as the Kamboh, blue-robed and
smiling, hove in sight, a basket in one hand and the child on the
other.

"Fall to, Holy Ones!" he cried from fifty yards. (They were by the
shoal under the first bridge-span, out of sight of hungry priests.)
"Rice and good curry, cakes all warm and well scented with hing
(asafoetida), curds and sugar. King of my fields," this to the small
son, "let us show these holy men that we Jats of Jullundur can pay a
service.... I had heard the Jains would eat nothing that they had
not cooked, but truly"- he looked away politely over the broad
river- "where there is no eye there is no caste."

"And we," said Kim, turning his back and heaping a leaf-platter
for the lama, "are beyond all castes."

They gorged themselves on the good food in silence. Nor till he
had licked the last of the sticky sweet-stuff from his little finger
did Kim note that the Kamboh too was girt for travel.

"If our roads lie together," he said roughly, "I go with thee. One
does not often find a worker of miracles, and the child is still weak.
But I am not altogether a reed." He picked up his lathi- a five-foot
male-bamboo ringed with bands of polished iron- and flourished it in
the air. "The Jats are called quarrelsome, but that is not true.
Except when we are crossed we are like our own buffaloes.

"So be it," said Kim. "A good stick is a good reason."

The lama gazed placidly up-stream, where in long, smudged
perspective the ceaseless columns of smoke go up from the
burning-ghats by the river. Now and again, despite all municipal
regulations, the fragment of a half-burned body bobbed by on the
full current.

"But for thee," said the Kamboh to Kim, drawing his child into his
hairy breast, "I might to-day have gone thither- with this one. The
priests tell us that Benares is holy- which none doubt- and
desirable to die in. But I do not know their Gods, and they ask for
money; and when one has done one worship a shaved-head vows it is of
none effect except one do another. Wash here! Wash there! Pour, drink,
lave, and scatter flowers- but always pay the priests. No, the
Punjab for me, and the soil of the Jullundur-doab for the best soil in
it."

"I have said many times- in the temple I think- that if need be, the
River will open at our feet. We will therefore go North," said the
lama, rising. "I remember a pleasant place, set about with
fruit-trees, where one can walk in meditation- and the air is cooler
there. It comes from the Hills and the snow of the Hills."

"What is the name?" said Kim.

"How should I know? Didst thou not- no, that was after the Army rose
out of the earth and took thee away. I abode there in meditation in
a room against the dove-cot- except when she talked eternally."

"Oho! the woman from Kulu. That is by Saharunpore," Kim laughed.

"How does the spirit move thy master? Does he go afoot, for the sake
of past sins?" the Jat demanded cautiously. "It is a far cry to
Delhi."

"No," said Kim. "I will beg a tikkut for the te-rain." One does
not own to the possession of money in India.

"Then in the name of the Gods, let us take the fire-carriage. My son
is best in his mother's arms. The Government has brought on us many
taxes, but it gives us one good thing- the te-rain that joins
friends and unites the anxious. A wonderful matter is the te-rain."

They all piled into it a couple of hours later, and slept through
the heat of the day. The Kamboh plied Kim with ten thousand
questions as to the lama's walk and work in life, and received some
curious answers. Kim was content to be where he was, to look out
upon the flat North-Western landscape, and to talk to the changing mob
of fellow-passengers. Even to-day, tickets and ticket-clipping are
dark oppression to Indian rustics. They do not understand why, when
they have paid for a magic piece of paper, strangers should punch
great pieces out of the charm. So long and furious are the debates
between travellers and Eurasian ticket-collectors. Kim assisted at two
or three with grave advice, meant to darken council and to show off
his wisdom before the lama and the admiring Kamboh. But at Somna
Road the Fates sent him a matter to think upon. There tumbled into the
compartment, as the train was moving off, a mean, lean little
person- a Mahratta, so far as Kim could judge by the cock of the tight
turban. His face was cut, his muslin upper-garment was badly torn, and
one leg was bandaged. He told them that a country-cart had upset and
nearly slain him: he was going to Delhi, where his son lived. Kim
watched him closely. If, as he asserted, he had been rolled over and
over on the earth, there should have been signs of gravel-rash on
the skin. But all his injuries seemed clean cuts, and a mere fall from
a cart could not cast a man into such extremity of terror. As, with
shaking fingers, he knotted up the torn cloth about his neck he laid
bare an amulet of the kind called a keeper-up of the heart. Now,
amulets are common enough, but they are not generally strung on
square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black
enamel on silver. There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in
the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends.
Kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own
amulet. The Mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight, and he
disposed the amulet fairly on his breast.

"Yes," he went on to the Kamboh, "I was in haste, and the cart,
driven by a bastard, bound its wheel in a water-cut, and besides the
harm done to me there was lost a full dish of tarkeean. I was not a
Son of the Charm (a lucky man) that day."

"That was a great loss," said Kamboh, withdrawing interest. His
experience of Benares had made him suspicious.

"Who cooked it?" said Kim.

"A woman." The Mahratta raised his eyes.

"But all women can cook tarkeean," said the Kamboh. "It is a good
curry, as I know."

"Oh, yes, it is a good curry," said the Mahratta.

"And cheap," said Kim. "But what about caste?"

"Oh, there is no caste where men go to- look for tarkeean," the
Mahratta replied, in the prescribed cadence. "Of whose service art
thou?"

"Of the service of this Holy One." Kim pointed to the happy,
drowsy lama, who woke with a jerk at the well-loved word.

"Ah, he was sent from Heaven to aid me. He is called the Friend of
all the World. He is also called the Friend of the Stars. He walks
as a physician- his time being ripe. Great is his wisdom."

"And a Son of the Charm," said Kim under his breath, as the Kamboh
made haste to prepare a pipe lest the Mahratta should beg.

"And who is that?" the Mahratta asked, glancing sideways nervously.

"One whose child I- we have cured, who lies under great debt to
us. Sit by the window, man from Jullundur. Here is a sick one."

"Humph! I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears
are not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets." The Jat
slid himself heavily into a far corner.

"Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in
calamity," cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue.

"The man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him," Kim
retorted. "None interfered between thy babe and me."

"I am rebuked," said the Kamboh meekly. "I am thy debtor for the
life of my son. Thou art a miracle-worker- I know it."

"Show me the cuts." Kim bent over the Mahratta's neck, his heart
nearly choking him; for this was the Great Game with a vengeance.
"Now, tell thy tale swiftly, brother, while I say a charm."

"I come from the South, where my work lay. One of us they slew by
the roadside. Hast thou heard?" Kim shook his head. He, of course,
knew nothing of E.23's predecessor, slain down South in the habit of
an Arab trader. "Having found a certain letter which I was sent to
seek, I came away. I escaped from the city and ran to Mhow. So sure
was I that none knew, I did not change my face. At Mhow a woman
brought charge against me of theft of jewellery in that city which I
had left. Then I saw the cry was out against me. I ran from Mhow by
night, bribing the police, who had been bribed to hand me over without
question to my enemies in the South. Then I lay in old Chitor city a
week, a penitent in a temple, but I could not get rid of the letter
which was my charge. I buried it under the Queen's Stone, at Chitor,
in the place known to us all."

Kim did not know, but not for worlds would he have broken the
thread.

"At Chitor, look you, I was all in Kings' country; for Kotah to
the east is beyond the Queen's law, and east again lie Jeypur and
Gwalior. Neither love spies, and there is no justice. I was hunted
like a wet jackal; but I broke through at Bandakui, where I heard
there was a charge against me of murder in the city I had left- of the
murder of a boy. They have both the corpse and the witnesses waiting."

"But cannot the Government protect?"

"We of the Game are beyond protection. If we die, we die. Our
names are blotted from the book. That is all. At Bandakui, where lives
one of us, I thought to slip the scent by changing my face, and so
made me a Mahratta. Then I came to Agra, and would have turned back to
Chitor to recover the letter. So sure I was I had slipped them.
Therefore I did not send a tar (telegram) to anyone saying where the
letter lay. I wished the credit of it all."

Kim nodded. He understood that feeling well.

"But at Agra, walking in the streets, a man cried a debt against me,
and approaching with many witnesses, would hale me to the courts
then and there. Oh, they are clever in the South! He recognised me
as his agent for cotton. May he burn in Hell for it!"

"And wast thou?"

"O fool! I was the man they sought for the matter of the letter! I
ran into the Fleshers' Ward and came out by the House of the Jew,
who feared a riot and pushed me forth. I came afoot to Somna Road- I
had only money for my tikkut to Delhi- and there, while I lay in a
ditch with a fever, one sprang out of the bushes and beat me and cut
me and searched me from head to foot. Within earshot of the te-rain it
was!"

"Why did he not slay thee out of hand?"

"They are not so foolish. If I am taken in Delhi at the instance
of lawyers, upon a proven charge of murder, my body is handed over
to the State that desires it. I go back guarded, and then- I die
slowly for an example to the rest of us. The South is not my
country. I run in circles- like a goat with one eye. I have not
eaten for two days. I am marked"- he touched the filthy bandage on his
leg- "so that they will know me at Delhi."

"Thou art safe in the te-rain, at least."

"Live a year at the Great Game and tell me that again! The wires
will be out against me at Delhi, describing every tear and rag upon
me. Twenty- a hundred, if need be- will have seen me slay that boy.
And thou art useless!"

Kim knew enough of native methods of attack not to doubt that the
case would be deadly complete- even to the corpse. The Mahratta
twitched his fingers with pain from time to time. The Kamboh in his
corner glared sullenly; the lama was busy over his beads; and Kim,
fumbling doctor-fashion at the man's neck, thought out his plan
between invocations.

"Hast thou a charm to change my shape? Else I am dead. Five- ten
minutes alone, if I had not been so pressed, and I might- "

"Is he cured yet, miracle-worker?" said the Kamboh jealously.
"Thou hast chanted long enough."

"Nay. There is no cure for his hurts, as I see, except he sit for
three days in the habit of a bairagi." This is a common penance, often
imposed on a fat trader by his spiritual teacher.

"One priest always goes about to make another priest," was the
retort. Like most grossly superstitious folk, the Kamboh could not
keep his tongue from deriding his Church.

"Will thy son be a priest, then? It is time he took more of my
quinine."

"We Jats are all buffaloes," said the Kamboh, softening anew.

Kim rubbed a finger-tip of bitterness on the child's trusting little
lips. "I have asked for nothing," he said sternly to the father,
"except food. Dost thou grudge me that? I go to heal another man. Have
I thy leave- Prince?"

Up flew the man's huge paws in supplication. "Nay- nay. Do not
mock me thus."

"It pleases me to cure this sick one. Thou shalt acquire merit by
aiding. What colour ash is there in thy pipe-bowl? White. That is
auspicious. Was there raw turmeric among thy food-stuffs?"

"Open thy bundle!"

It was the usual collection of small oddments: bits of cloth,
quack medicines, cheap fairings, a clothful of atta- grayish,
rough-ground native flour- twists of down-country tobacco, tawdry
pipe-stems, and a packet of curry-stuff, all wrapped in a quilt. Kim
turned it over with the air of a wise warlock, muttering a
Mohammedan invocation.

"This is wisdom I learned from the Sahibs," he whispered to the
lama; and here, when one thinks of his training at Lurgan's, he
spoke no more than the truth. "There is a great evil in this man's
fortune, as shown by the stars, which- which troubles him. Shall I
take it away?"

"Friend of the Stars, thou hast done well in all things. Let it be
at thy pleasure. Is it another healing?"

"Quick! Be quick!" gasped the Mahratta. "The train may stop."

"A healing against the shadow of death," said Kim, mixing the
Kamboh's flour with the mingled charcoal and tobacco ash in the
red-earth bowl of the pipe. E.23, without a word, slipped off his
turban and shook down his long black hair.

"That is my food- priest," the Jat growled.

"A buffalo in the temple! Hast thou dared to look even thus far?"
said Kim. "I must do mysteries before fools; but have a care for thy
eyes. Is there a film before them already? I save the babe, and for
return thou- oh, shameless!" The man flinched at the direct gaze,
for Kim was wholly in earnest. "Shall I curse thee, or shall I- " He
picked up the outer cloth of the bundle and threw it over the bowed
head. "Dare so much as to think a wish to see, and- and- even I cannot
save thee. Sit! Be dumb!"

"I am blind- dumb. Forbear to curse! Co-come, child; we will play
a game of hiding. Do not, for my sake, look from under the cloth."

"I see hope," said E.23. "What is thy scheme?"

"This comes next," said Kim, plucking the thin body-shirt. E.23
hesitated, with all a North-West man's dislike of baring his body.

"What is caste to a cut throat?" said Kim, rending it to the
waist. "We must make thee a yellow Saddhu all over. Strip- strip
swiftly, and shake thy hair over thy eyes while I scatter the ash.
Now, a caste-mark on thy forehead." He drew from his bosom the
little Survey paint-box and a cake of crimson lake.

"Art thou only a beginner?" said E.23, labouring literally for the
dear life, as he slid out of his body-wrappings and stood clear in the
loin-cloth while Kim splashed in a noble caste-mark on the ash-smeared
brow.

"But two days entered to the Game, brother," Kim replied. "Smear
more ash on the bosom."

"Hast thou met- a physician of sick pearls?" He switched out his
long, tight-rolled turban-cloth and, with swiftest hands, rolled it
over and under about his loins into the intricate devices of a
Saddhu's cincture.

"Hah! Dost thou know his touch, then? He was my teacher for a while.
We must bar thy legs. Ash cures wounds. Smear it again."

"I was his pride once, but thou art almost better. The Gods are kind
to us! Give me that."

It was a tin box of opium pills among the rubbish of the Jat's
bundle. E.23 gulped down a half handful. "They are good against
hunger, fear, and chill. And they make the eyes red too," he
explained. "Now I shall have heart to play the Game. We lack only a
Saddhu's tongs. What of the old clothes?"

Kim rolled them small, and stuffed them into the slack folds of
his tunic. With a yellow-ochre paint cake he smeared the legs and
breast, great streaks against the background of flour, ash, and
turmeric.

"The blood on them is enough to hang thee, brother."

"May be; but no need to throw them out of the window.... It is
finished." His voice thrilled with a boy's pure delight in the Game.
"Turn and look, O Jat!"

"The Gods protect us," said the hooded Kamboh, emerging like a
buffalo from the reeds. "But- whither went the Mahratta? What hast
thou done?"

Kim had been trained by Lurgan Sahib; and E.23, by virtue of his
business, was no bad actor. In place of the tremulous, shrinking
trader there lolled against the corner an all but naked,
ash-smeared, ochre-barred, dusty-haired Saddhu, his swollen eyes-
opium takes quick effect on an empty stomach- luminous with
insolence and bestial lust, his legs crossed under him, Kim's brown
rosary round his neck, and a scant yard of worn, flowered chintz on
his shoulders. The child buried his face in his amazed father's arms.

"Look up, Princeling! We travel with warlocks, but they will not
hurt thee. Oh, do not cry.... What is the sense of curing a child
one day and killing him with fright the next?"

"The child will be fortunate all his life. He has seen a great
healing. When I was a child I made clay men and horses."

"I have made them too. Sir Banas, he comes in the night and makes
them all alive at the back of our kitchen-midden," piped the child.

"And so thou art not frightened at anything. Eh, Prince?"

"I was frightened because my father was frightened. I felt his
arms shake."

"Oh, chicken-man," said Kim, and even the abashed Jat laughed. I
have done a healing on this poor trader. He must forsake his gains and
his account-books, and sit by the wayside three nights to overcome the
malignity of his enemies. The Stars are against him."

"The fewer money-lenders the better, say I; but, Saddhu or no
Saddhu, he should pay for my stuff on his shoulders."

"So? But that is thy child on thy shoulder- given over to the
burning-ghat not two days ago. There remains one thing more. I did
this charm in thy presence because need was great. I changed his shape
and his soul. None the less, if, by any chance, O man from
Jullundur, thou rememberest what thou hast seen, either among the
elders sitting under the village tree, or in thy own house, or in
company of thy priest when he blesses thy cattle, a murrain will
come among the buffaloes, and a fire in thy thatch, and rats in the
corn-bin, and the curse of our Gods upon thy fields that they may be
barren before thy feet and after thy ploughshare." This was part of an
old curse picked up from a faquir by the Taksali Gate in the days of
Kim's innocence. It lost nothing by repetition.

"Cease, Holy One! In mercy, cease!" cried the Jat. "Do not curse the
household. I saw nothing! I heard nothing! I am thy cow!" and he
made to grab at Kim's bare foot beating rhythmically on the carriage
floor.

"But since thou hast been permitted to aid me in the matter of a
pinch of flour and a little opium and such trifles as I have
honoured by using in my art, so will the Gods return a blessing,"
and he gave it at length, to the man's immense relief. It was one that
he had learned from Lurgan Sahib.

The lama stared through his spectacles as he had not stared at the
business of disguisement.

"Friend of the Stars," he said at last, "thou hast acquired great
wisdom. Beware that it do not give birth to pride. No man having the
Law before his eyes speaks hastily of any matter which he has seen
or encountered."

"No- no- no indeed," cried the farmer, fearful lest the master
should be minded to improve on the pupil. E.23, with relaxed mouth,
gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to
the spent Asiatic.

So, in a silence of awe and great miscomprehension, they slid into
Delhi about lamp-lighting time.

                               12


  "Who hath desired the Sea- the sight of salt-water unbounded?
  The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber
     wind-hounded?
  The sleek-barrelled swell before storm- gray, foamless, enormous,
     and growing?
  Stark calm on the lap of the Line- or the crazy-eyed hurricane
     blowing?
  His Sea in no showing the same- his Sea and the same 'neath all
     showing-
        His Sea that his being fulfils?
  So and no otherwise- so and no otherwise Hill-men desire their
     Hills!"


"I have found my heart again," said E.23, under cover of the
platform's tumult. "Hunger and fear make men dazed, or I might have
thought of this escape before. I was right. They come to hunt for
me. Thou hast saved my head."

A group of yellow-trousered Punjab policemen, headed by a hot and
perspiring young Englishman, parted the crowd about the carriages.
Behind them, inconspicuous as a cat, ambled a small fat person who
looked like a lawyer's tout.

"See the young Sahib reading from a paper. My description is in
his hand," said E.23. "They go carriage by carriage, like
fisher-folk netting a pool."

When the procession reached their compartment, E.23 was counting his
beads with a steady jerk of the wrist; while Kim jeered at him for
being so drugged as to have lost the ringed fire-tongs which are the
Saddhu's distinguishing mark. The lama, deep in meditation, stared
straight before him; and the farmer, glancing furtively, gathered up
his belongings.

"Nothing here but a parcel of holy-bolies," said the Englishman
aloud, and passed on amid a ripple of uneasiness; for native police
mean extortion to the native all India over.

"The trouble now," whispered E.23, "lies in sending a wire as to the
place where I hid that letter I was sent to find. I cannot go to the
tar-office in this guise."

"Is it not enough I have saved thy neck?"

"Not if the work be left unfinished. Did never the healer of sick
pearls tell thee so? Comes another Sahib! Ah!"

This was a tallish, sallowish District Superintendent of Police-
belt, helmet, polished spurs and all- strutting and twirling his
dark moustache.

"What fools are these Police Sahibs!" said Kim genially.

E.23 glanced up under his eyelids. "It is well said," he muttered in
a changed voice. "I go to drink water. Keep my place."

He blundered out almost into the Englishman's arms, and was
bad-worded in clumsy Urdu.

"Tum-mut? You drunk? You mustn't bang about as though Delhi
station belonged to you, my friend."

E.23, not moving a muscle of his countenance, answered with a stream
of the filthiest abuse, at which Kim naturally rejoiced. It reminded
him of the drummer-boys and the barrack-sweepers at Umballa in the
terrible time of his first schooling.

"My good fool," the Englishman drawled. "Nicklejao! Go back to
your carriage."

Step by step, withdrawing deferentially, and dropping his voice, the
yellow Saddhu clomb back to the carriage, cursing the D. S. P. to
remotest posterity by- here Kim almost jumped- by the curse of the
Queen's Stone, by the writing under the Queen's Stone, and by an
assortment of Gods with wholly new names.

"I don't know what you're saying"- the Englishman flushed angrily-
"but it's some piece of blasted impertinence. Come out of that!"

E.23, affecting to misunderstand, gravely produced his ticket, which
the Englishman wrenched angrily from his hand.

"Oh zoolum! What oppression!" growled the Jat from his corner.
"All for the sake of a jest too." He had been grinning at the
freedom of the Saddhu's tongue. "Thy charms do not work well to-day,
Holy One!"

The Saddhu followed the policeman, fawning and supplicating. The
ruck of passengers, busy with their babies and their bundles, had
not noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed
through his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib
discoursing loud personalities to an old lady near Umballa three years
ago.

"It is well," the Saddhu whispered, jammed in the calling, shouting,
bewildered press- a Persian greyhound between his feet and a
cadgeful of yelling hawks under charge of a Rajput falconer in the
small of his back." He has gone now to send word of the letter which I
hid. They told me he was in Peshawur. I might have known that he is
like the crocodile- always at the other ford. He has saved me from
present calamity, but I owe my life to thee."

"Is he also one of Us?" Kim ducked under a Mewar camel-driver's
greasy armpit and cannoned off a covey of jabbering Sikh matrons.

"Not less than the greatest. We are both fortunate! I will make
report to him of what thou hast done. I am safe under his protection."

He bored through the edge of the crowd besieging the carriages,
and squatted by the bench near the telegraph-office.

"Return, or they take thy place! Have no fear for the work, brother-
or my life. Thou hast given me breathing-space, and Strickland Sahib
has pulled me to land. We may work together at the Game yet. Farewell!

Kim hurried to his carriage: elated, bewildered, but a little
nettled in that he had no key to the secrets about him.

"I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure. I could not have
leaped into safety as did the Saddhu. He knew it was darkest under the
lamp. I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of
cursing... and how clever was the Sahib! No matter, I saved the life
of one.... Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?" he whispered, as he
took his seat in the now crowded compartment.

"A fear gripped him," the lama replied, with a touch of tender
malice. "He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the
twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil. That shook him.
Then he saw the Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the polis- all the
effect of thy art. Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said
that thou didst change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of
words with the Sahibs, and he feared a like fate. Where is the
Saddhu?"

"With the polis," said Kim.... "Yet I saved the Kamboh's child."

The lama snuffed blandly.

"Ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken! Thou didst cure the Kamboh's
child solely to acquire merit. But thou didst put a spell on the
Mahratta with prideful workings- I watched thee- and with side-long
glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer: whence
calamity and suspicion."

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years. Not more
than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged,
but he saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of Delhi
into the night.

"It is true," he murmured. "Where I have offended thee I have done
wrong."

"It is more, chela. Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a
stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not
tell how far."

This ignorance was well both for Kim's vanity and for the lama's
peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at
Simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of E.23 at Delhi, and, more
important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to-
abstract. Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on
charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant
Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr. Strickland on
Delhi platform, while E.23 was paddling through by-ways into the
locked heart of Delhi city. In two hours several telegrams had reached
the angry minister of a southern State reporting that all trace of a
somewhat bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely
train halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the stone Kim had
helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in
far-away Roum- where it disturbed a pious man at prayers.

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougain-villea-trellis
near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of
his disciple. "We will put these things behind us," he said,
indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track. "The jolting of
the te-rain- though a wonderful thing- has turned my bones to water.
We will use clean air henceforward."

"Let us go to the Kulu woman's house," said Kim, and stepped forth
cheerily under the bundles. Early morning Saharunpore-way is clean and
well scented. He thought of the other mornings at St. Xavier's, and it
topped his already thrice-heaped contentment.

"Where is this new haste born from? Wise men do not run about like
chickens in the sun. We have come hundreds upon hundreds of kos
already, and, till now, I have scarcely been alone with thee an
instant. How canst thou receive instruction all jostled of crowds? How
can I, whelmed by a flux of talk, meditate upon the Way?"

"Her tongue grows no shorter with the years, then?" The disciple
smiled.

"Nor her desire for charms. I remember once when I spoke of the
Wheel of Life"- the lama fumbled in his bosom for his latest copy-
"she was only curious about the devils that besiege children. She
shall acquire merit by entertaining us- in a little while- at an
after-occasion- softly, softly. Now we will wander loose-foot, waiting
upon the Chain of Things. The Search is sure."

So they travelled very easily across and among the broad bloomful
fruit-gardens- by way of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the Ford, and
little Phulesa- the line of the Sewaliks always to the north, and
behind them again the snows. After long, sweet sleep under the dry
stars came the lordly, leisurely passage through a waking village-
begging-bowl held forth in silence, but eyes roving in defiance of the
Law from sky's edge to sky's edge. Then would Kim return soft-footed
through the soft dust to his master under the shadow of a mango tree
or the thinner shade of a white Doon siris, to eat and drink at
ease. At mid-day, after talk and a little wayfaring, they slept;
meeting the world refreshed when the air was cooler. Night found
them adventuring into new territory- some chosen village spied three
hours before across the fat land, and much discussed upon the road.

There they told their tale- a new one each evening so far as Kim was
concerned- and there were they made welcome, either by priest or
headman, after the custom of the kindly East.

When the shadows shortened and the lama leaned more heavily upon
Kim, there was always the Wheel of Life to draw forth, to hold flat
under wiped stones, and with a long straw to expound cycle by cycle.
Here sat the Gods on high- and they were dreams of dreams. Here was
our Heaven and the world of the demi-Gods- horsemen fighting among the
hills. Here were the agonies done upon the beasts, souls ascending
or descending the ladder and therefore not to be interfered with. Here
were the Hells, hot and cold, and the abodes of tormented ghosts.
Let the chela study the troubles that come from over-eating- bloated
stomach and burning bowels. Obediently then, with bowed head and brown
finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chela study; but when they
came to the Human World, busy and profitless, that is just above the
Hells, his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the
very Wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and
quarrelling- all warmly alive. Often the lama made the living pictures
the matter of his text, bidding Kim- too ready- note how the flesh
takes a thousand thousand shapes, desirable or detestable as men
reckon, but in truth of no account either way; and how the stupid
spirit, bond-slave to the Hog, the Dove, and the Serpent- lusting
after betel-nut, a new yoke of oxen, women, or the favour of kings- is
bound to follow the body through all the Heavens and all the Hells,
and strictly round again. Sometimes a woman or a poor man, watching
the ritual- it was nothing less- when the great yellow chart was
unfolded, would throw a few flowers or a handful of cowries upon its
edge. It sufficed these humble ones that they had met a Holy One who
might be moved to remember them in his prayers.

"Cure them if they are sick," said the lama, when Kim's sporting
instincts woke. "Cure them if they have fever, but by no means work
charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta."

"Then all Doing is evil?" Kim replied, lying out under a big tree at
the fork of the Doon road, watching the little ants run over his hand.

"To abstain from action is well- except to acquire merit."

"At the Gates of Learning we were taught that to abstain from action
was unbefitting a Sahib. And I am a Sahib."

"Friend of all the World"- the lama looked directly at Kim- "I am an
old man- pleased with shows as are children. To those who follow the
Way there is neither black nor white, Hind nor Bhotiyal. We be all
souls seeking escape. No matter what thy wisdom learned among
Sahibs, when we come to my River thou wilt be freed from all illusion-
at my side. Hai! my bones ache for that River, as they ached in the
te-rain; but my spirit sits above my bones, waiting. The Search is
sure!"

"I am answered. Is it permitted to ask a question?"

The lama inclined his stately head.

"I ate thy bread for three years- as thou knowest. Holy One,
whence came- ?"

"There is much wealth, as men count it, in Bhotiyal," the lama
returned with composure. "In my own place I have the illusion of
honour. I ask for that I need. I am not concerned with the account.
That is for my monastery. Ai! The black high seats in the monastery,
and the novices all in order!"

And he told stories, tracing with a finger in the dust, of the
immense and sumptuous ritual of avalanche-guarded cathedrals; of
processions and devil-dances; of the changing of monks and nuns into
swine; of holy cities fifteen thousand feet in the air; of intrigue
between monastery and monastery; of voices among the hills, and of
that mysterious mirage that dances on dry snow. He spoke even of
Lhassa and of the Dalai Lama, whom he had seen and adored.

Each long, perfect day rose behind Kim for a barrier to cut him
off from his race and his mother-tongue. He slipped back to thinking
and dreaming in the vernacular, and mechanically followed the lama's
ceremonial observances at eating, drinking, and the like. The old
man's mind turned more and more to his monastery as his eyes turned to
the steadfast snows. His River troubled him nothing. Now and again,
indeed, he would gaze long and long at a tuft or a twig, expecting, he
said, the earth to cleave and deliver its blessing; but he was content
to be with his disciple, at ease in the temperate wind that comes down
from the Doon. This was not Ceylon, nor Buddh Gaya, nor Bombay, nor
some grass-tangled ruins that he seemed to have stumbled upon two
years ago. He spoke of those places as a scholar removed from
vanity, as a Seeker walking in humility, as an old man, wise and
temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant insight. Bit by bit,
disconnectedly, each tale called up by some wayside thing, he spoke of
all his wanderings up and down Hind; till Kim, who had loved him
without reason, now loved him for fifty good reasons. So they
enjoyed themselves in high felicity, abstaining, as the Rule
demands, from evil words, covetous desires; not over-eating, not lying
on high beds, nor wearing rich clothes. Their stomachs told them the
time, and the people brought them their food, as the saying is. They
were lords of the villages of Aminabad, Sahaigunge, Akrola of the
Ford, and little Phulesa, where Kim gave the soulless woman a
blessing.

But news travels fast in India, and too soon shuffled across the
crop-land, bearing a basket of fruits with a box of Cabul grapes and
gilt oranges, a white-whiskered servitor- a lean, dry Oorya- begging
them to bring the honour of their presence to his mistress, distressed
in her mind that the lama had neglected her so long.

"Now do I remember"- the lama spoke as though it were a wholly new
proposition. "She is virtuous, but an inordinate talker."

Kim was sitting on the edge of a cow's manger, telling stories to
a village smith's children.

"She will only ask for another son for her daughter. I have not
forgotten her," he said. "Let her acquire merit. Send word that we
will come."

"They covered eleven miles through the fields in two days, and
were overwhelmed with attentions at the end; for the old lady held a
fine tradition of hospitality, to which she forced her son-in-law, who
was under the thumb of his women-folk and brought peace by borrowing
of the money-lender. Age had not weakened her tongue or her memory,
and from a discreetly barred upper window, in the hearing of not
less than a dozen servants, she paid Kim compliments that would have
flung European audiences into unclean dismay.

"But thou art still the shameless beggar-brat of the parao," she
shrilled. "I have not forgotten thee. Wash ye and eat. The father of
my daughter's son is gone away awhile. So we poor women are dumb and
useless."

For proof, she harangued the entire household unsparingly till
food and drink were brought; and in the evening- the smoke-scented
evening, copper-dun and turquoise across the fields- it pleased her to
order her palanquin to be set down in the untidy forecourt by smoky
torch-light; and there, behind not too closely drawn curtains, she
gossiped.

"Had the Holy One come alone, I should have received him
otherwise; but with this rogue, who can be too careful?"

"Maharanee," said Kim, choosing as always the amplest title, "is
it my fault that none other than a Sahib- a polis-sahib- called the
Maharanee whose face he- "

"Chitt! That was on the pilgrimage. When we travel- thou knowest the
proverb."

"Called the Maharanee a Breaker of Hearts and a Dispenser of
Delights?"

"To remember that! It was true. So he did. That was in the time of
the bloom of my beauty." She chuckled like a contented parrot above
the sugar lump. "Now tell me of thy goings and comings- as much as may
be without shame. How many maids, and whose wives, hang upon thy
eyelashes? Ye hail from Benares? I would have gone there again this
year, but my daughter- we have only two sons. Phaii! Such is the
effect of these low plains. Now in Kulu men are elephants. But I would
ask thy Holy One- stand aside, rogue- a charm against most
lamentable windy colics that in mango-time overtake my daughter's
eldest. Two years back he gave me a powerful spell."

"Oh, Holy One!" said Kim, bubbling with mirth at the lama's rueful
face.

"It is true. I gave her one against wind."

"Teeth- teeth- teeth," snapped the old woman.

"Cure them when they are sick," Kim quoted relishingly, "but by no
means work charms. Remember what befell the Mahratta."

"That was two Rains ago; she wearied me with her continual
importunity." The lama groaned as the Unjust Judge had groaned
before him. "Thus it comes- take note, my chela- that even those who
would follow the Way are thrust aside by idle women. Three days
through, when the child was sick, she talked to me."

"Arre! and to whom else should I talk? The boy's mother knew
nothing, and the father- in the nights of the cold weather it was-
'Pray to the Gods,' said he, forsooth, and turning over, snored!"

"I gave her the charm. What is an old man to do?"

"'To abstain from action is well- except when we acquire merit.'"

"Ah, chela, if thou desertest me, I am all alone."

"He found his milk-teeth easily at any rate," said the old lady.
"But all priests are alike."

Kim coughed severely. Being young, he did not approve of her
flippancy. "To importune the wise out of season is to invite
calamity."

"There is a talking mynah"- the thrust came back with the
well-remembered snap of the jewelled fore-finger- "over the stables
which has picked up the very tone of the family-priest. Maybe I forget
honour to my guests, but if ye had seen him double his fists into
his belly, which was like a half-grown gourd, and cry: 'Here is the
pain!' ye would forgive. I am half minded to take the hakim's
medicine. He sells it cheap, and certainly it makes him fat as
Shiv's own bull. He does not deny remedies, but I doubted for the
child because of the inauspicious colour of the bottles."

The lama, under cover of the monologue, had faded out into the
darkness towards the room prepared.

"Thou hast angered him, belike," said Kim.

"Not he. He is wearied, and I forgot, being a grandmother. (None but
a grandmother should ever oversee a child. Mothers are only fit for
bearing.) To-morrow, when he sees how my daughter's son is grown, he
will write the charm. Then, too, he can judge of the new hakim's
drugs."

"Who is the hakim, Maharanee?"

"A wanderer, as thou art, but a most sober Bengali from Dacca- a
master of medicine. He relieved me of an oppression after meat by
means of a small pill that wrought like a devil unchained. He
travels about now, vending preparations of great value. He has even
papers, printed in Angrezi, telling what things he has done for
weak-backed men and slack women. He has been here four days; but
hearing ye were coming (hakims and priests are snake and tiger the
world over) he has, as I take it, gone to cover."

While she drew breath after this volley, the ancient servant,
sitting unrebuked on the edge of the torch-light, muttered:- "This
house is a cattle-pound, as it were, for all charlatans and-
priests. Let the boy stop eating mangoes... but who can argue with a
grandmother?" He raised his voice respectfully: "Sahiba, the hakim
sleeps after his meat. He is in the quarters behind the dovecot."

Kim bristled like an expectant terrier. To outface and down-talk a
Calcutta-taught Bengali, a voluble Dacca drug-vendor, would be a
good game. It was not seemly that the lama, and incidentally
himself, should be thrown aside for such an one. He knew those curious
bastard English advertisements at the backs of native newspapers.
St. Xavier's boys sometimes brought them in by stealth to snigger over
among their mates; for the language of the grateful patient recounting
his symptoms is most simple and revealing. The Oorya, not unanxious to
play off one parasite against the other, slunk away towards the
dovecot.

"Yes," said Kim, with measured scorn. "Their stock-in-trade is a
little coloured water and a very great shamelessness. Their prey are
broken-down kings and overfed Bengalis. Their profit is in children-
who are not born."

The old lady chuckled. "Do not be envious. Charms are better, eh?
I never gainsaid it. See that thy Holy One writes me a good amulet
by the morning."

"None but the ignorant deny"- a thick, heavy voice boomed through
the darkness, as a figure came to rest squatting- "None but the
ignorant deny the value of charms. None but the ignorant deny the
value of medicines."

"A rat found a piece of turmeric. Said he: 'I will open a grocer's
shop,'" Kim retorted.

Battle was fairly joined now, and they heard the old lady stiffen to
attention.

"The priest's son knows the names of his nurse and three Gods.
Says he: 'Hear me, or I will curse you by the three million Great
Ones.'" Decidedly this invisible had an arrow or two in his quiver. He
went on: "I am but a teacher of the alphabet. I have learned all the
wisdom of the Sahibs."

"The Sahibs never grow old. They dance and they play like children
when they are grandfathers. A strong-backed breed," piped the voice
inside the palanquin.

"I have, too, our drugs which loosen humours of the head in hot
and angry men. Sina well compounded when the moon stands in the proper
House; yellow earths I have- arplan from China that makes a man to
renew his youth and astonish his household; saffron from Kashmir,
and the best salep of Cabul. Many people have died before- "

"That I surely believe," said Kim.

"They knew the value of my drugs. I do not give my sick the mere ink
in which a charm is written, but hot and rending drugs which descend
and wrestle with the evil."

"Very mightily they do so," sighed the old lady.

The voice launched into an immense tale of misfortune and
bankruptcy, studded with plentiful petitions to the Government. "But
for my fate, which overrules all, I had been now in Government employ.
I bear a degree from the great school at Calcutta- whither, maybe, the
son of this house shall go."

"He shall indeed. If our neighbour's brat can in a few years be made
an F.A." (First Arts- she used the English word, of which she had
heard so often), "how much more shall children clever as some that I
know bear away prizes at rich Calcutta."

"Never," said the voice, "have I seen such a child! Born in an
auspicious hour, and- but for that colic which, alas! turning into
black cholers, may carry him off like a pigeon- destined to many
years, he is enviable."

"Hai mai!" said the old lady. "To praise children is inauspicious,
or I could listen to this talk. But the back of the house is
unguarded, and even in this soft air men think themselves to be men
and women we know.... The child's father is away too, and I must be
chowkedar (watchman) in my old age. Up! Up! Take up the palanquin. Let
the hakim and the young priest settle between them whether charms or
medicine most avail. Ho! worthless people, fetch tobacco for the
guests, and- round the homestead go I!"

The palanquin reeled off, followed by straggling torches and a horde
of dogs. Twenty villages knew the Sahiba- her failings, her tongue,
and her large charity. Twenty villages cheated her after immemorial
custom, but no man would have stolen or robbed within her jurisdiction
for any gift under Heaven. None the less, she made great parade of her
formal inspections, the riot of which could be heard half-way to
Mussoorie.

Kim relaxed, as one augur must when he meets another. The hakim,
still squatting, slid over his hookah with a friendly foot, and Kim
pulled at the good weed. The hangers-on expected grave professional
debate, and perhaps a little free doctoring.

"To discuss medicine before the ignorant is of one piece with
teaching the peacock to sing," said the hakim.

"True courtesy," Kim echoed, "is very often inattention."

These, be it understood, were company-manners, designed to impress.

"Hi! I have an ulcer on my leg," cried a scullion. "Look at it!"

"Get hence! Remove!" said the hakim. "Is it the habit of the place
to pester honoured guests? Ye crowd in like buffaloes."

"If the Sahiba knew- " Kim began.

"Ai! Ai! Come away. They are meat for our mistress. When her young
Shaitan's colics are cured perhaps we poor people may be suffered
to- "

"The mistress fed thy wife when thou wast in jail for breaking the
money-lender's head. Who speaks against her?" The old servitor
curled his white moustaches savagely in the young moonlight. "I am
responsible for the honour of this house. Go!" and he drove the
underlings before him.

Said the hakim, hardly more than shaping the words with his lips:
"How do you do, Mr. O'Hara? I am jolly glad to see you again."

Kim's hand clenched about the pipe-stem. Anywhere on the open
road, perhaps, he would not have been astonished; but here, in this
quiet backwater of life, he was not prepared for Hurree Babu. It
annoyed him, too, that he had been hoodwinked.

"Ah ha! I told you at Lucknow- resurgam- I shall rise again and
you shall not know me. How much did you bet- eh?"

He chewed leisurely upon a few cardamom seeds, but he breathed
uneasily.

"But why come here, Babuji?"

"Ah! Thatt is the question, as Shakespeare hath said. I come to
congratulate you on your extraordinary effeecient performance at
Delhi. Oah! I tell you we are all proud of you. It was verree neat and
handy. Our mutual friend, he is old friend of mine. He has been in
some dam-tight places. Now he will be in some more. He told me; I tell
Mr. Lurgan; and he is pleased you graduate so nicely. All the
Department is pleased."

For the first time in his life, Kim thrilled to the clean pride
(it can be a deadly pitfall, none the less) of Departmental praise-
ensnaring praise from an equal of work appreciated by
fellow-workers. Earth has nothing on the same plane to compare with
it. But, cried the Oriental in him, Babus do not travel far to
retail compliments.

"Tell thy tale, Babu," he said authoritatively.

"Oah, it is nothing. Onlee I was at Simla when the wire came in
about what our mutual friend said he had hidden, and old Creighton-
" He looked to see how Kim would take this piece of audacity.

"The Colonel Sahib," the boy from St. Xavier's corrected.

"Of course. He found me at a loose string, and I had to go down to
Chitor to find that beastly letter. I do not like the South- too
much railway travel; but I drew good travelling allowance. Ha! Ha! I
meet our mutual at Delhi on the way back. He lies quiett just now, and
says Saddhu-disguise suits him to the ground. Well, there I hear
what you have done so well, so quickly, upon the instantaneous spur of
the moment. I tell our mutual friend you take the bally bun, by
Jove! It was splendid. I come to tell you so."

"Umm!"

The frogs were busy in the ditches, and the moon slid to her
setting. Some happy servant had gone out to commune with the night and
to beat upon a drum. Kim's next sentence was in the vernacular.

"How didst thou follow us?"

"Oah. Thatt was nothing. I know from our mutual friend you go to
Saharunpore. So I come on. Red lamas are not inconspicuous persons.
I buy myself my drug-box, and I am very good doctor really. I go to
Akrola by the Ford, and hear all about you, and I talk here and talk
there. All the common people know what you do. I know when the
hospitable old lady sent the dooli. They have great recollections of
the old lama's visits here. I know old ladies cannot keep their
hands from medicines. So I am a doctor, and- you hear my talk? I think
it is verree good. My word, Mister O'Hara, they know about you and the
lama for fifty miles- the common people. So I come. Do you mind?"

"Babuji," said Kim, looking up at the broad, grinning face, "I am
a Sahib."

"My dear Mister O'Hara- "

"And I hope to play the Great Game."

"You are subordinate to me departmentally at present."

"Then why talk like an ape up in a tree? Men do not come after one
from Simla and change their dress, for the sake of a few sweet
words. I am not a child. Talk Hindi and let us get to the yolk of
the egg. Thou art here- speaking not one word of truth in ten. Why art
thou here? Give a straight answer."

"That is so verree disconcerting of the European, Mister O'Hara. You
should know a heap better at your time of life."

"But I want to know," said Kim, laughing. If it is the Game, I may
help. How can I do anything if you bukh (babble) all round the shop."

Hurree Babu reached for the pipe, and sucked it till it guggled
again.

"Now I will speak vernacular. You sit tight, Mister O'Hara.... It
concerns the pedigree of a white stallion."

"Still? That was finished long ago."

"When every one is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.
Listen to me till the end. There were Five Kings who prepared a sudden
war three years ago, when thou wast given the stallion's pedigree by
Mahbub Ali. Upon them, because of that news, and ere they were
ready, fell our Army."

"Ay- eight thousand men with guns. I remember that night."

"But the war was not pushed. That is the Government custom. The
troops were recalled because the Government believed the Five Kings
were cowed; and it is not cheap to feed men among the high Passes.
Hilas and Bunar- Rajahs with guns- undertook for a price to guard
the passes against all coming from the North. They protested both fear
and friendship." He broke off with a giggle into English: "Of
course, I tell you this unoffeecially to elucidate political
situation, Mister O'Hara. Offeecially, I am debarred from
criticising any action of superior. Now I go on.- This pleased the
Government, anxious to avoid expense, and a bond was made for so
many rupees a month that Hilas and Bunar should guard the Passes as
soon as the State's troops were withdrawn. At that time- it was
after we two met- I, who had been selling tea in Leh, became a clerk
of accounts in the Army. When the troops were withdrawn, I was left
behind to pay the coolies who made new roads in the Hills. This
road-making was part of the bond between Bunar, Hilas, and the
Government."

"So; and then?"

"I tell you, it was jolly beastly cold up there too, after
summer," said Hurree Babu confidentially. "I was afraid these Bunar
men would cut my throat every night for thee pay-chest. My native
sepoy-guard, they laughed at me! By Jove! I was such a fearful man!
Nevar mind thatt. I go on colloquially.... I send word many times that
these two Kings were sold to the North; and Mahbub Ali, who was yet
farther north, amply confirmed it. Nothing was done. Only my feet were
frozen, and a toe dropped off. I sent word that the roads for which
I was paying money to the diggers were being made for the feet of
strangers and enemies."

"For?"

"For the Russians. The thing was an open jest among the coolies.
Then I was called down to tell what I knew by speech of tongue. Mahbub
came South too. See the end! Over the Passes this year after
snow-melting"- he shivered afresh- "come two strangers under cover
of shooting wild goats. They bear guns, but they bear also chains
and levels and compasses."

"Oho! The thing gets clearer."

"They are well received by Hilas and Bunar. They make great
promises; they speak as the mouthpiece of a Kaisar, with gifts. Up the
valleys, down the valleys go they, saying, 'Here is a place to build a
breastwork; here can ye pitch a fort. Here can ye hold the road
against an army'- the very roads for which I paid out the rupees
monthly. The Government knows, but does nothing. The three other
Kings, who were not paid for guarding the Passes, tell them by
runner of the bad faith of Bunar and Hilas. When all the evil is done,
look you- when these two strangers with the levels and the compasses
make the Five Kings to believe that a great army will sweep the Passes
to-morrow or the next day- Hill-people are all fools- comes the
order to me, Hurree Babu 'Go North and see what those strangers do.' I
say to Creighton Sahib, 'This is not a lawsuit, that we go about to
collect evidence.'" Hurree returned to his English with a jerk: "'By
Jove,' I said, 'why the dooce do you not issue demi-offeecial orders
to some brave man to poison them, for an example? It is, if you permit
the observation, most reprehensible laxity on your part.' And
Colonel Creighton, he laughed at me! It is all your beastly English
pride. You think no one dare conspire! That is all tommy-rott."

Kim smoked slowly, revolving the business, so far as he understood
it, in his quick mind.

"Then thou goest forth to follow the strangers?"

"No; to meet them. They are coming in to Simla to send down their
horns and heads to be dressed at Calcutta. They are exclusively
sporting gentlemen, and they are allowed special faceelities by the
Government. Of course, we always do that. It is our British pride."

"Then what is to fear from them?"

"By Jove, they are not black people. I can do all sorts of things
with black people, of course. They are Russians, and highly
unscrupulous people. I- I do not want to consort with them without a
witness."

"Will they kill thee?"

"Oah, thatt is nothing. I am good enough Herbert Spencerian, I
trust, to meet little thing like death, which is all in my fate, you
know. But- but they may beat me."

"Why?"

Hurree Babu snapped his fingers with irritation. "Of course I
shall affeeliate myself to their camp in supernumerary capacity as
perhaps interpreter, or person mentally impotent and hungree, or
some such thing. And then I must pick up what I can, I suppose. That
is as easy for me as playing Mister Doctor to the old lady. Onlee-
onlee- you see, Mister O'Hara, I am unfortunately Asiatic, which is
serious detrimnent in some respects. And all-so I am Bengali- a
fearful man."

"God made the Hare and the Bengali. What shame?" said Kim, quoting
the proverb.

"It was process of Evolution, I think, from Primal Necessity, but
the fact remains in all its cui bono. I am, oh, awfully fearful!- I
remember once they wanted to cut off my head on the road to Lhassa.
(No, I have never reached to Lhassa.) I sat down and cried, Mister
O'Hara, anticipating Chinese tortures. I do not suppose these two
gentlemen will torture me, but I like to provide for possible
contingency with European assistance in emergency." He coughed and
spat out his cardamoms. "It is purely unoffeecial indent, to which you
can say, 'No, Babu.' If you have no pressing engagement with your
old man- perhaps you might divert him; perhaps I can seduce his
fancies- I should like you to keep in Departmental touch with me
till I find those sporting coves. I have great opeenion of you since I
met my friend at Delhi. And also I will embody your name in my
offeecial report when matter is finally adjudicated. It will be a
great feather in your cap. That is why I come really."

"Humph! The end of the tale, I think, is true; but what of the
fore-part?"

"About the Five Kings? Oah! there is ever so much truth in it. A
lots more than you would suppose," said Hurree earnestly. "You come-
eh? I go from here straight into the Doon. It is verree verdant and
painted meads. I shall go to Mussoorie- to good old Mussoorie Pahar,
as the gentlemen and ladies say. Then by Rampur into Chini. That is
the only way they can come. I do not like waiting in the cold, but
we must wait for them. I want to walk with them to Simla. You see, one
Russian is a Frenchman, and I know my French pretty well. I have
friends in Chandernagore."

"He would certainly rejoice to see the Hills again," said Kim
meditatively. "All his speech these ten days past has been of little
else. If we go together- ?"

"Oah! We can be quite strangers on the road, if your lama prefers. I
shall just be four or five miles ahead. There is no hurry for
Hurree- that is an Europe pun, ha! ha!- and you come after. There is
plenty of time; they will plot and survey and map of course. I shall
go to-morrow, and you the next day, if you choose. Eh? You go think on
it till morning. By Jove, it is near morning now." He yawned
ponderously, and with never a civil word lumbered off to his
sleeping-place. But Kim slept little, and his thoughts ran in
Hindustanee:

"Well is the Game called great! I was four days a scullion at
Quetta, waiting on the wife of the man whose book I stole. And that
was part of the Great Game! From the South- God knows how far- came up
the Mahratta, playing the Great Game in fear of his life. Now I
shall go far and far into the North playing the Great Game. Truly,
it runs like a shuttle throughout all Hind. And my share and my
joy"- he smiled to the darkness- "I owe to the lama here. Also to
Mahbub Ali- also to Creighton Sahib, but chiefly to the Holy One. He
is right- a great and a wonderful world- and I am Kim- Kim- Kim-
alone- one person- in the middle of it all. But I will see these
strangers with their levels and chains..."

"What was the upshot of last night's babble?" said the lama, after
his orisons.

"There came a strolling seller of drugs- a hanger-on of the
Sahiba's. Him I abolished by arguments and prayers, proving that our
charms are worthier than his coloured waters."

"Alas! my charms. Is the virtuous woman still bent upon a new one?"

"Very strictly."

"Then it must be written, or she will deafen me with her clamour."
He fumbled at his pencase.

"In the Plains," said Kim, "are always too many people. In the
Hills, as I understand, there are fewer."

"Oh! the Hills, and the snow upon the Hills." The lama tore off a
tiny square of paper fit to go in an amulet. "But what dost thou
know of the Hills?"

"They are very close." Kim thrust open the door and looked at the
long, peaceful line of the Himalayas flushed in morning-gold.
"Except in the dress of a Sahib, I have never set foot among them."

The lama snuffed the wind wistfully.

"If we go north"- Kim put the question to the waking sunrise- "would
not much mid-day heat be avoided by walking among the lower hills at
least?... Is the charm made, Holy One?"

"I have written the names of seven silly devils- not one of whom
is worth a grain of dust in the eye. Thus do foolish women drag us
from the Way!"

Hurree Babu come out from behind the dovecot, washing his teeth with
ostentatious ritual. Full-fleshed, heavy-haunched, bull-necked, and
deep-voiced, he did not look like "a fearful man." Kim signed almost
imperceptibly that matters were in good train, and when the morning
toilet was over Hurree Babu, in flowery speech, came to do honour to
the lama. They ate, of course, apart, and afterwards the old lady,
more or less veiled behind a window, returned to the vital business of
green-mango colics in the young. The lama's knowledge of medicine
was of course sympathetic only. He believed that the dung of a black
horse, mixed with sulphur, and carried in a snake-skin, was a sound
remedy for cholera; but the symbolism interested him far more than the
science. Hurree Babu deferred to these views with enchanting
politeness, so that the lama called him a courteous physician.
Hurree Babu replied that he was no more than an inexpert dabbler in
the mysteries; but at least- he thanked the Gods therefor- he knew
when he sat in the presence of a master. He himself had been taught by
the Sahibs, who do not consider expense, in the lordly halls of
Calcutta; but, as be was ever first to acknowledge, there lay a wisdom
behind earthly wisdom- the high and lonely lore of meditation. Kim
looked on with envy. The Hurree Babu of his knowledge- oily, effusive,
and nervous- was gone; gone too was the brazen drug-vendor of
overnight. There remained- polished, polite, attentive- a sober,
learned son of experience and adversity, gathering wisdom from the
lama's lips. The old lady confided to Kim that these rare levels
were beyond her. She liked charms with plenty of ink that one could
wash off in water, swallow, and be done with. Else what was the use of
the Gods? She liked men and women, and she spoke of them- of
kinglets she had known in the past; of her own youth and beauty; of
the depredations of leopards and the eccentricities of love Asiatic;
of the incidence of taxation, rack-renting, funeral ceremonies, her
son-in-law (this by allusion, easy to be followed), the care of the
young, and the age's lack of decency. And Kim, as interested in the
life of this world as she soon to leave it, squatted with his feet
under the hem of his robe, drinking all in, while the lama
demolished one after another every theory of body-curing put forward
by Hurree Babu.

At noon the Babu strapped up his brass-bound drug-box, took his
patent-leather shoes of ceremony in one hand, a gay blue and white
umbrella in the other, and set off northwards to the Doon, where, he
said, he was in demand among the lesser kings of those parts.

"We will go in the cool of the evening, chela," said the lama. "That
doctor, learned in physic and courtesy, affirms that the people
among these lower hills are devout, generous, and much in need of a
teacher. In a very short time- so says the hakim- we come to cool
air and the smell of pines."

"Ye go to the Hills. And by Kulu-road? Ah, thrice happy!" shrilled
the old lady. "But that I am a little pressed with the care of the
homestead I would take palanquin... but that would be shameless, and
my reputation would be cracked. Ho! Ho! know the road- every march
of the road I know. Ye will find charity throughout- it is not
denied to the well-looking. I will give orders for provision. A
servant to set you forth upon your journey? No.... Then I will at
least cook ye good food."

"What a woman is the Sahiba!" said the white-bearded Oorya, when a
tumult rose by the kitchen quarters. "She has never forgotten a
friend: she has never forgotten an enemy in all her years. And her
cookery- wah!" He rubbed his slim stomach.

There were cakes, there were sweetmeats, there was cold fowl
stewed to rags with rice and prunes- enough to burden Kim like a mule.

"I am old and useless," she said. "None now love me- and none
respect- but there are few to compare with me when I call on the
Gods and squat to my cooking-pots. Come again, O people of good
will! Holy One and disciple, come again! The room is always
prepared; the welcome is always ready.... See the women do not
follow thy chela too openly. I know the women of Kulu. Take heed,
chela, lest he run away when he smells his Hills again.... Hai! Do not
tilt the rice-bag upside down.... Bless the household, Holy One, and
forgive thy servant her stupidities."

She wiped her red old eyes on a corner of her veil, and clucked
throatily.

"Women talk," said the lama at last, "but that is a woman's
infirmity. I gave her a charm. She is upon the Wheel and wholly
given over to the shows of this life, but none the less, chela, she is
virtuous, kindly, hospitable- of a whole and zealous heart. Who
shall say she does not acquire merit?"

"Not I, Holy One," said Kim, reslinging the bountiful provision on
his shoulders. "In my mind- behind my eyes- I have tried to picture
such an one altogether freed from the Wheel- desiring nothing, causing
nothing- a nun, as it were."

"And, O imp?" The lama almost laughed aloud.

"I cannot make the picture."

"Nor I. But there are many, many millions of lives before her. She
will get wisdom a little, it may be, in each one."

"And will she forget how to make stews with saffron upon that road?"

"Thy mind is set on things unworthy. But she has skill. I am
refreshed all over. When we reach the lower hills I shall be yet
stronger. The hakim spoke truly to me this morn when he said a
breath from the snows blows away twenty years from the life of a
man. We will go up into the Hills- the high hills- up to the sound
of snow-water and the sound of the trees- for a little while. The
hakim said that at any time we may return to the Plains, for we do
no more than skirt the pleasant places. The hakim is full of learning;
but he is in no way proud. I spoke to him- when thou wast talking to
the Sahiba- of a certain dizziness that lays hold upon the back of
my neck in the night, and he said it rose from excessive heat- to be
cured by cool air. Upon consideration, I marvelled that I had not
thought of such a simple remedy."

"Didst thou tell him of thy Search?" said Kim, a little jealously.
He preferred to sway the lama by his own speech- not through the wiles
of Hurree Babu.

"Assuredly. I told him of my dream, and of the manner by which I had
acquired merit by causing thee to be taught wisdom."

"Thou didst not say I was a Sahib?"

"What need? I have told thee many times we be but two souls
seeking escape. He said- and he is just herein- that the River of
Healing will break forth even as I dreamed- at my feet if need be.
Having found the Way, seest thou, that shall free me from the Wheel,
need I trouble to find a way about the mere fields of earth- which are
illusion? That were senseless. I have my dreams, night upon night
repeated; I have the 'Jataka'; and I have thee, Friend of all the
World. It was written in thy horoscope that a Red Bull on a green
field- I have not forgotten- should bring thee to honour. Who but I
saw that prophecy accomplished? Indeed, I was the instrument. Thou
shalt find me my River, being in return the instrument. The Search
is sure!"

He set his ivory-yellow face, serene and untroubled, towards the
beckoning Hills; his shadow shouldering far before him in the dust.

                              13


  "Who hath desired the Sea- the immense and contemptuous
     surges?
  The shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing
     bow-spirit emerges-
  The orderly clouds of the Trades and the ridged roaring sapphire
     thereunder-
  Unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the head-sails' low-volleying
     thunder?
  His Sea is no wonder the same- his Sea and the same in each
     wonder-
             His Sea that his being fulfils?
  So and no otherwise- so and no otherwise Hill-men desire their
     Hills!"


"Who goes to the Hills goes to his mother."

They had crossed the Sewaliks and the half-tropical Doon, left
Mussoorie behind them, and headed north along the narrow hillroads.
Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day
after day Kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. Among the
terraces of the Doon he had leaned on the boy's shoulder, ready to
profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Mussoorie he drew
himself together as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and
where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about
him, drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only
a hillman can. Kim, plains-bred and plains-fed, sweated and panted
astonished. "This is my country," said the lama. "Besides Suchzen,
this is flatter than a ricefield"; and with steady, driving strokes
from the loins he strode upwards. But it was on the steep downhill
marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away
from Kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was
nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string. Through the speckled shadow
of the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with
ferns; birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare
hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands'
coolth again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley,
the lama swung untiring.

Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and
the faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay
out, with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for
the morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on
Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the
high snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above
stark blue, as Kedarnath and Badrinath- kings of that wilderness- took
the first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the
sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they
breathed temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when
one crawled over some gigantic hogback; but in a few days, at a height
of nine or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly
allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough
blanket-coat. The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should
object to the knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his
shoulders.

"These are but the lower hills, chela. There is no cold till we come
to the true Hills."

"Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the
food is very bad," Kim growled; "and we walk as though we were mad- or
English. It freezes at night, too."

"A little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the
sun. We must not always delight in the soft beds and rich food."

"We might at the least keep to the road."

Kim had all a plains-man's affection for the well-trodden track, not
six feet wide, that snaked among the mountains; but the lama, being
Tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims
of gravel-strewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a
man bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain-road,
and though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting
stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus,
after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in
civilised countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle past
a few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five
on to the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the
hill-folk- mud and earth huts, the timbers now and then rudely
carved with an axe- clinging like swallows' nests against the
steeps, huddled on tiny flats half-way down a three-thousand-foot
glissade; jammed into a corner between cliffs that funnelled and
focused every wandering blast; or, for the sake of summer pasture,
cowering down on a neck that in winter would be ten feet deep in snow.
And the people- the sallow, greasy, duffle-clad people, with short
bare legs and faces almost Esquimaux- would flock out and adore. The
Plains- kindly and gentle- had treated the lama as a holy man among
holy men. But the Hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all
the devils. Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a
nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the
terracing of their tiny fields; but they recognised the big hat, the
clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority; and
they respected the man under the hat.

"We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua," said a
Betah who gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one
evening. "We do not use that often- except when calving cows stray
in summer. There is a sudden wind among those stones that casts men
down on the stillest day. But what should such folk care for the Devil
of Eua!"

Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down,
footsore with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take
joy in the day's march- such joy as a boy of St. Xavier's who had
won the quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his
friends. The hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the
dry air, taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built
out his upper ribs; and tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf
and thigh.

They meditated often on the Wheel of Life- the more so since, as the
lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. Except the
gray eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the
hillside, the vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a
still valley devouring a goat, and now and again a bright-coloured
bird, they were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the
wind. The women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as
they descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many
husbands, and afflicted with goitre. The men were wood-cutters when
they were not farmers- meek, and of an incredible simplicity. But that
suitable discourse might not fail, Fate sent them, overtaking and
overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for
his food in ointments good for goitre and counsels that restore
peace between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as well
as he knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land
towards Ladakh and Tibet. He said they could return to the Plains at
any moment. Meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might
amuse. This was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening
encounters on the stone threshing-floors, when, patients disposed
of, the doctor would smoke and the lama snuff, while Kim watched the
wee cows grazing on the house-tops, or threw his soul after his eye
across the deep blue gulfs between range and range. And there were
talks apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and
Kim, as budding physician, must accompany him.

"You see, Mister O'Hara, I do not know what the deuce-an'-all I
shall do when I find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep
within sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral
survey, I feel much better."

Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. "This is not my
country, hakim. Easier, I think, to find one louse in a bear-skin."

"Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree.
They were at Leh not so long ago. They said they had come down from
the Kara Korum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid
they will have sent back all their letters and compromising things
from Leh into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk away as far
to the East as possible- just to show that they were never among the
Western States. You do not know the Hills?" He scratched with a twig
on the earth. "Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or
Abbottabad. Thatt is their short road- down the river by Bunji and
Astor. But they have made mischief in the West. So"- he drew a
furrow from left to right- "they march and they march away East to Leh
(ah! it is cold there), and down the Indus to Han-le (I know that
road), and then down, you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley. That is
ascertained by process of elimination, and also by asking questions
from people that I cure so well. Our friends have been a long time
playing about and producing impressions. So they are well known from
far off. You will see me catch them somewhere in Chini valley.
Please keep your eye on the umbrella."

It nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round
the mountain sides, and in due time the lama and Kim, who steered by
compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide.
"We came by such and such a way!" The lama would throw a careless
finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expend itself in
compliments.

They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly
chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees, like a Bactrian camel- the
snow-bred, shag-haired sort that come into the Kashmir Serai. They
dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they
took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny
sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy
shoulders still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew.
For all their marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed;
and it was only after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some
insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a
shoulder-knot or horn of the two great lords had- ever so slightly-
changed outline.

At last they entered a world within a world- a valley of leagues
where the high hills were fashioned of the mere rubble and refuse from
off the knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no
farther, it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a
nightmare. They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold,
it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main
pile! A rounded meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it,
for a vast tableland running far into the valley. Three days later, it
was a dim fold in the earth to southward.

"Surely the Gods live here," said Kim, beaten down by the silence
and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain.
"This is no place for men!"

"Long and long ago," said the lama, as to himself, "it was asked
of the Lord whether the world were everlasting. To this the
Excellent One returned no answer.... When I was in Ceylon, a wise
Seeker confirmed that from the gospel which is written in Pali.
Certainly, since we know the way to Freedom, the question were
unprofitable, but- look, and know illusion, chela! These are the
true Hills! They are like my hills by Suchzen. Never were such hills!"

Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away
towards the snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of
miles, ruled as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped.
Above that, in scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight
their heads above the white smother. Above these again, changeless
since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and
cloud, lay out the eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its
face where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. Below
them, as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for
mile upon mile; below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of
terraced fields and steep grazing-grounds; below the village they
knew, though a thunderstorm worried and growled there for the
moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet gave to the moist
valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young Sutluj.

As usual, the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road, far from
the main route along which Hurree Babu, that "fearful man," had
bucketed three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen
out of ten would have given full right of way. Hurree was no
game-shot- the snick of a trigger made him change colour- but, as he
himself would have said, he was "fairly effeecient stalker," and he
had raked the huge valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some
purpose. Moreover, the white of worn canvas tents against green
carries far. Hurree Babu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat
on the threshing-floor of Ziglaur, twenty miles away as the eagle
flies, and forty by road- that is to say, two small dots which one day
were just below the snow-line, and the next had moved downward perhaps
six inches on the hillside. Once cleaned out and set to the work,
his fat bare legs could cover a surprising amount of ground, and
this was the reason why, while Kim and the lama lay in a leaky hut
at Ziglaur till the storm should be overpassed, an oily, wet, but
always smiling Bengali, talking the best of English with the vilest of
phrases, was ingratiating himself with two sodden and rather rheumatic
foreigners. He had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on the
heels of a thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their
camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly impressed
baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for further travel that
with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They were
subjects of a Hill-Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the
custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal
distresses, the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with
rifles. The most of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old; they were
trackers and shikarris of the Northern valleys keen after bear and
wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the
forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused
to restore. There was no need to feign madness or- the Babu had
thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet
clothes, slipped on his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue and
white umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart beating against
his tonsils appeared as "agent for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of
Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do for you, please?"

The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other
Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu's.
They begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at
Leh. They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils
of the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a
general letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to
all Government officials. No, they had not met any other
shooting-parties en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of
supplies. They only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this
he waylaid a cowering hillman among the trees, and after three
minutes' talk and a little silver (one cannot be economical upon State
service, though Hurree's heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies
and the three hangers-on reappeared. At least the Babu would be a
witness to oppression.

"My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are
onlee common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will
kindly overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a
little while rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been
shooting, eh? That is fine performance!"

He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to
adjust each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule, familiar
with the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly
Babu who had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. On the
other hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were he never so
friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these
things, and asked many questions- about women mostly- to which
Hurree returned gay and unstudied answers. They gave him a glass of
whitish fluid like to gin, and then more; and in a little time his
gravity departed from him. He became thickly treasonous, and spoke
in terms of sweeping indecency of a Government which had forced upon
him a white man's education and neglected to supply him with a white
man's salary. He babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the
tears ran down his cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he
staggered off, singing love-songs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed
upon a wet tree-trunk. Never was so unfortunate a product of English
rule in India more unhappily thrust upon aliens.

"They are all just of that pattern," said one sportsman to the other
in French. "When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should like
to visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is
possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his goodwill."

"We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be," his
companion replied. "For my own part, I wish our reports had been
sent back from Hilas, or even Leh."

"The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all
facilities- and name of God!- they give them to us too! Is it
unbelievable stupidity?"

"It is pride- pride that deserves and will receive punishment."

"Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something.
There is a risk attached, but these people- bah! It is too easy."

"Pride- all pride, my friend."

"Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to
Calcutta and all," said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden
moss, "if I cannot understand their French. They talk so
par-tic-ularly fast! It would have been much better to cut their
beastly throats."

When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache-
penitent, and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have
been indiscreet. He loved the British Government- it was the source of
all prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very same
opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote past
words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and
leers of infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his
defences and forced to speak- truth! When Lurgan was told the tale
later, he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of
the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their
heads and the raindrops puddling in their foot-prints, waited on the
weather. All the Sahibs of their acquaintance- rough-clad men joyously
returning year after year to their chosen gullies- had servants and
cooks and orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled
without any retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant;
for no Sahib in his senses would follow a Bengali's advice. But the
Bengali, appearing from somewhere, had given them money, and would
make shift with their dialect. Used to comprehensive ill-treatment
from their own colour, they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by
to run if occasion offered.

Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious
earth-smells, the Babu led the way down the slopes- walking ahead of
the coolies in pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His
thoughts were many and various. The least of them would have
interested his companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide,
ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. He
peopled the hills with anything they had a mind to slay- thar, ibex,
or markhor, and bear by Elisha's allowance. He discoursed of botany
and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local
legends- he had been a trusted agent of the State for fifteen years,
remember- was inexhaustible.

"Decidedly this fellow is an original," said the taller of the two
foreigners. "He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier."

"He represents in petto India in transition- the monstrous hybridism
of East and West," the Russian replied. "It is we who can deal with
Orientals."

"He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But
he has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confides
to me last night," etc.

Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain
to follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a kilta
full of maps and documents- an extra large one with a double red
oilskin cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to
know what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had
stolen it. He thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert
Spencer, that there remained some valuables to steal.

On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the
forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged
lama- but they called him a bonze- sitting cross-legged above a
mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a
young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty.
The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had
suggested a halt till it came up to them.

"Ha!" said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. "That is
eminent local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master."

"What is he doing? It is very curious."

"He is expounding holy picture- all hand-worked."

The two men stood bare-headed in the wash of the afternoon
sunlight low across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies,
glad of the check, halted and slid down their loads.

"Look!" said the Frenchman. "It is like a picture for the birth of a
religion- the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a Buddhist?"

"Of some debased kind," the other answered. "There are no true
Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery.
Look at his eyes- how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we
are so young a people?" The speaker struck passionately at a tall
weed. "We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you
understand, is what disquiets me." He scowled at the placid face,
and the monumental calm of the pose.

"Have patience. We shall make your mark together- we and you young
people. Meantime, draw his picture."

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his
deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

"Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and
I go into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture-
"

"To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life," said
the lama, "the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the
rain fell."

"And to hear thee expound it."

The lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. "To
expound the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of
Hindi, such as had the Keeper of Images?"

"A little, maybe."

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama
threw back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the
Doctor of Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers
leaned on their alpen-stocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly,
watched the red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting
of their long shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious
girt-in belts that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book at
St. Xavier's library: "The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico"
was its name. Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast
of that tale, and very unlike the "highly unscrupulous folk" of Hurree
Babu's imagining. The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched
reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack
of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze,
stood by with an air of happy proprietorship.

"These are the men," Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the
two whites followed the grass blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and
back again. "All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish
top- books and reports and maps- and I have seen a King's letter
that either Hilas or Bunar has written. They guard it most
carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilas or Leh. That is
sure."

"Who is with them?"

"Only the beggar-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close
they cook their own food."

"But what am I to do?"

"Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where
to seek for the papers."

"This were better in Mahbub Ali's hands than a Bengali's," said
Kim scornfully.

"There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down
a wall."

"See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the
one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness." The lama warmed
to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading
light.

"That is enough," the man said at last brusquely. "I cannot
understand him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I.
Ask him if he will sell it."

"He says 'No, sar,'" the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no
more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an
archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of a cathedral. All Tibet is
full of cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an
artist, as well as a wealthy abbot in his own place.

"Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the
Sahib is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him
another. But this was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him
so, hakim."

"He wishes it now- for money."

The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The
Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling
over a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and
snatched half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama's grip. A
low murmur of horror went up from the coolies- some of whom were Spiti
men and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult;
his hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's weapon,
and the Babu danced in agony.

"Now you see- you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly
unscrupulous people. Oh Sar! Sar! You must not hit holy man!"

"Chela! He has defiled the Written Word!"

It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck
the old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and
over down hill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every
unknown Irish devil in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his
enemy did the rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the
coolies under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run
across the level. They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it
behoved them to get away before the Gods and devils of the hills
took vengeance. The Frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his
revolver with some notion of making him a hostage for his companion. A
shower of cutting stones- hillmen are very straight shots- drove him
away, and a coolie from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the
stampede. All came about as swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness.

"They have taken the baggage and all the guns," yelled the
Frenchman, firing blindly into the twilight.

"All right, Sar! All right! Don't shoot. I go to rescue," and
Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the
delighted and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe's
head against a boulder.

"Go back to the coolies," whispered the Babu in his ear. "They
have the baggage. The papers are in the kilta with the red top, but
look through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla (King's
letter). Go! The other man comes!"

Kim tore up hill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side,
and he cowered partridge-wise.

"If you shoot," shouted Hurree, "they will descend and annihilate
us. I have rescued the gentleman, Sar. This is par-tic-ularly
dangerous."

"By Jove!" Kim was thinking hard in English. "This is dam-tight
place, but I think it is self-defence." He felt in his bosom for
Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly- save for a few practice shots in the
Bikaner desert, he had never used the little gun- pulled trigger.

"What did I say, Sar!" The Babu seemed to be in tears. "Come down
here and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you."

The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim
hurried upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat- or a
country-bred.

"Did they wound thee, chela?" called the lama above him.

"No. And thou?" He dived into a clump of stunted firs.

"Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to
Shamlegh-under-the-Snow."

"But not before we have done justice," a voice cried. "I have got
the Sahibs' guns- all four. Let us go down."

"He struck the Holy One- we saw it! Our cattle will be barren- our
wives will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go
home.... Atop of all other oppression too!"

The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies- panic-stricken,
and in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked
the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go down hill.

"Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far: wait till I return."

"It is this person who has suffered wrong," said the lama, his
hand over his brow.

"For that very reason," was the reply.

"If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye
acquire merit by obedience."

"Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together," the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into
a breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and
laid a finger on the man's shoulder.

"Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing- I who was Abbot
of Suchzen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake
under the eaves- a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy
wish to- "

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a
Tibetan devil-gong.

"Ai! ai!" cried the Spiti men. "Do not curse us- do not curse him.
It was but his zeal, Holy One!... Put down the rifle, fool!"

"Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the
priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the
Wheel swerving not a hair! They will be born many times- in
torment." His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim's shoulder.

"I have come near to great evil, chela," he whispered in that dead
hush under the pines. "I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly,
in Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them....
He struck me across the face... upon the flesh..." He slid to the
ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart
bump and check.

"Have they hurt him to the death?" said the Ao-chung man, while
the others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. "Nay," he cried
passionately, "this is only a weakness." Then he remembered that he
was a white man, with a white man's camp-fittings at his service.
"Open the kiltas! The Sahibs may have a medicine."

"Oho! Then I know it," said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. "Not
for five years was I Yankling Sahib's shikarri without knowing that
medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!"

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky- such as is sold to
explorers at Leh- and cleverly forced a little between the lama's
teeth.

"So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha!
I have already looked into their baskets- but we will make fair
division at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine.
Feel! His heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on
the chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs
this would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us
here. Then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns,
heh?"

"One is paid, I think, already," said Kim between his teeth. "I
kicked him in the groin as we went down hill. Would I had killed him!"

"It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur," said
one whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace.
"If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as
shikarris any more."

"Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs- not merry-minded men like
Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners- they cannot speak
Angrezi as do Sahibs."

Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary.

"There shall be no killing," he murmured. "Just is the Wheel! Evil
on evil- "

"Nay, Holy One. We are all here." The Ao-chung man timidly patted
his feet. "Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We
will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to
Shamlegh-under-the-Snow."

"After a blow," said a Spiti man sententiously, "it is best to
sleep."

"There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a
pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. I am an old man,
but not free from passion.... We must think of the Cause of Things."

"Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see."

"Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh."

This was the nervous Rampur man.

"I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's
shikarri. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this
cursed beegar (the corvee). Let two men watch below with the guns lest
the Sahibs do more foolishness. I shall not leave this Holy One."

They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening
awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and
Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from
hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese
cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark
duffle folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some
magic mine- gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked,
the voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as
the night-frost choked and clogged the runnels.

"How he stood up against us!" said a Spiti man admiring. "I remember
an old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a
shoulder-shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont
Sahib was a good shikarri."

"Not as good as Yankling Sahib." The Ao-chung man took a pull at the
whisky-bottle and passed it over. "Now hear me- unless any other man
thinks he knows more."

The challenge was not taken up.

"We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly
divide the baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle
and all its cartridges."

"Are the bears only bad on thy holding?" said a mate, sucking at the
pipe.

"No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women
can have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We will
do all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways,
remembering that we have never seen or taken service with these
Sahibs, who may, indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage."

"That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?"

"Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the
Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will he lead an army against
us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall throw on
Shamlegh midden, where no man has yet set foot."

"Who is at Shamlegh this summer?" The place was only a grazing
centre of three or four huts.

"The Woman of Shamlegh. She has no love for Sahibs, as we know.
The others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for
us all." He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket.

"But- but- "

"I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads
were bought in the bazar at Leh. I know the marks. I showed them to ye
last march."

"True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the
moth in them."

That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows.

"If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who
is a man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any
wrong to any Sahibs whom we know. They are priest-beaters. They
frightened us. We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do
ye think Yankling Sahib will permit down-country police to wander
all over the hills, disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to
Chini, and farther from Shamlegh to Shamlegh midden."

"So be it, but I carry the big kilta. The basket with the red top
that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning."

"Thus it is proved," said the Shamlegh man adroitly, "that they
are Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or
Yankling Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights
to shoot serow- I say, who ever heard of these Sahibs coming into
the hills without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and- and all
manner of well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail?
How can they make trouble? What of the kilta?"

"Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word- books and
papers in which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship."

"Shamlegh midden will take them all."

"True! But how if we insult the Sahibs' Gods thereby? I do not
like to handle the Written Word in that fashion. And their brass idols
are beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hill-folk."

"The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his chela." The Ao-chung
man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership.

"We have here," he whispered, "a kilta whose nature we do not know.

"But I do," said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural,
easy sleep, and Kim had been thinking of Hurree's last words. As a
player of the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the
Babu. "It is a kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things, not
to be handled by fools."

"I said it; I said it," cried the bearer of that burden. "Thinkest
thou it will betray us?"

"Not if it be given to me. I will draw out its magic. Otherwise it
will do great harm."

"A priest always takes his share." Whisky was demoralising the
Ao-chung man.

"It is no matter to me," Kim answered, with the craft of his
mother-country. "Share it among you, and see what comes!"

"Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than
enough for us all. We go our way from Shamlegh in the dawn."

They arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another
hour, while Kim shivered with cold and pride. The humour of the
situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were
the emissaries of the dread Power of the North, very possibly as great
in their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton, suddenly smitten
helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time.
They had made promises to Kings. To-night they lay out somewhere below
him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless- except for Hurree Babu,
guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game (Kim wondered to whom
they would report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come
about through no craft of Hurree's or contrivance of Kim's, but
simply, beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of Mahbub's
faquir-friends by the zealous young policeman at Umballa.

"They are there- with nothing; and, by Jove, it is cold! I am here
with all their things. Oh, they will be angry! I am sorry for Hurree
Babu."

Kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the Bengali
suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul was puffed and lofty. A mile
down the hill, on the edge of the pine-forest, two half-frozen men-
one powerfully sick at intervals- were varying mutual recriminations
with the most poignant abuse of the Babu, who seemed distraught with
terror. They demanded a plan of action. He explained that they were
very lucky to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them,
had passed beyond recall; that the Rajah, his master, was ninety miles
away, and, so far from lending them money and a retinue for the
Simla journey, would surely cast them into prison if he heard that
they had hit a priest. He enlarged on this sin and its consequences
till they bade him change the subject. Their one hope, said he, was
unostentatious flight from village to village till they reached
civilisation; and, for the hundredth time dissolved in tears, he
demanded of the high stars why the Sahibs "had beaten holy man."

Ten steps would have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly
beyond their reach- to the shelter and food of the nearest village,
where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure
cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of
his honoured employers. Crouched against a tree-trunk, he sniffed
dolefully.

"And have you thought," said the uninjured man hotly, "what sort
of spectacle we shall present wandering through these hills among
these aborigines?"

Hurree Babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the
remark was not to his address.

We cannot wander! I can hardly walk," groaned Kim's victim.

"Perhaps the holy man will be merciful in loving-kindness, Sar,
otherwise- "

"I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into
that young bonze when next we meet," was the unchristian answer.

"Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!" Hurree crouched lower. The war was
breaking out afresh. "Have you no consideration for our loss? The
baggage! The baggage!" He could hear the speaker literally dancing
on the grass. "Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our
gains! Eight months' work! Do you know what that means? 'Decidedly
it is we who can deal with Orientals!' Oh, you have done well."

They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was
with the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight months of good diplomacy.
There was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be
trusted. For the rest, he could so stage-manage the journey through
the hills that Hilas, Bunar, and four hundred miles of hill-roads
should tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their
own coolies are little respected in the Hills, and the hillman has a
very keen sense of humour.

"If I had done it myself," thought Hurree, "it would not have been
better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of course I arranged it
myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran down hill I thought it!
Thee outrage was accidental but onlee me could have worked it- ah- for
all it was dam-well worth. Consider the moral effect upon these
ignorant peoples! No treaties- no papers- no written documents at all-
and me to interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel! I
wish I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in
space simultaneously. That is axiomatic."

                              14


               My brother kneels (so saith Kabir)
                  To stone and brass in heathen-wise,
               But in my brother's voice I hear
                  My own unanswered agonies.
               His God is as his Fates assign-
               His prayer is all the world's- and mine.
                                              K A B I R


At moonrise the cautious coolies got under way. The lama,
refreshed by his sleep and the spirit, needed no more than Kim's
shoulder to bear him along- a silent, swift-striding man. They held
the shale-sprinkled grass for an hour, swept round the shoulder of
an immortal cliff, and climbed into a new country entirely blocked off
from all sight of Chini valley. A huge pasture-ground ran up
fan-shaped to the living snow. At its base was perhaps half an acre of
flat land, on which stood a few soil and timber huts. Behind them-
for, hill-fashion, they were perched on the edge of all things- the
ground fell sheer two thousand feet to Shamlegh midden, where never
yet man has set foot.

The men made no motion to divide the plunder till they had seen
the lama bedded down in the best room of the place, with Kim
shampooing his feet, Mohammedan fashion.

"We will send food," said the Ao-chung man, "and the red-topped
kilta. By dawn there will be none to give evidence, one way or the
other. If anything is not needed in the kilta- see here!"

He pointed through the window- opening into space that was filled
with moonlight reflected from the snow- and threw out an empty
whisky-bottle.

"No need to listen for the fall. This is the world's end," he
said, and swung off. The lama looked forth, a hand on either sill,
with eyes that shone like yellow opals. From the enormous pit before
him white peaks lifted themselves yearning to the moonlight. The
rest was as the darkness of interstellar space.

"These," he said slowly, "are indeed my Hills. Thus should a man
abide, perched above the world, separated from delights, considering
vast matters."

"Yes; if he has a chela to prepare tea for him, and to fold a
blanket for his head, and to chase out calving cows."

A smoky lamp burned in a niche, but the full moonlight beat it down;
and by the mixed light, stooping above the food-bag and cups, Kim
moved like a tall ghost.

"Ai! But now I have let the blood cool my head still beats and
drums, and there is a cord round the back of my neck."

"No wonder. It was a strong blow. May he who dealt it- "

"But for my own passions there would have been no evil."

"What evil? Thou hast saved the Sahibs from death they deserved a
hundred times."

"The lesson is not well learnt, chela." The lama came to rest on a
folded blanket, as Kim went forward with his evening routine. "The
blow was but a shadow upon a shadow. Evil in itself- my legs weary
apace these latter days!- it met evil in me- anger, rage, and a lust
to return evil. These wrought in my blood, woke tumult in my
stomach, and dazzled my ears." Here he drank scalding black-tea
ceremonially, taking the hot cup from Kim's hand. "Had I been
passionless, the evil blow would have done only bodily evil- a scar,
or a bruise- which is illusion. But my mind was not abstracted, for
rushed in straightway a lust to let the Spiti men kill. In fighting
that lust, my soul was torn and wrenched beyond a thousand blows.
Not till I had repeated the Blessings (he meant the Buddhist
Beatitudes) did I achieve calm. But the evil planted in me by that
moment's carelessness works out to its end. Just is the Wheel,
swerving not a hair! Learn the lesson, chela."

"It is too high for me," Kim muttered. "I am still all shaken. I
am glad I hurt the man."

"I felt that sleeping upon thy knees, in the wood below. It
disquieted me in my dreams- the evil in thy soul working through to
mine. Yet on the other hand"- he loosed his rosary- "I have acquired
merit by saving two lives- the lives of those that wronged me. Now I
must see into the Cause of Things. The boat of my soul staggers."

"Sleep, and be strong. That is wisest."

"I meditate: there is a need greater than thou knowest."

Till the dawn, hour after hour, as the moonlight paled on the high
peaks, and that which had been belted blackness on the sides of the
far hills showed as tender green forest, the lama stared fixedly at
the wall. From time to time he groaned. Outside the barred door, where
discomfited kine came to ask for their old stable, Shamlegh and the
coolies gave itself up to plunder and riotous living. The Ao-chung man
was their leader, and once they had opened the Sahibs' tinned foods
and found that they were very good they dared not turn back.
Shamlegh kitchen-midden took the dunnage.

When Kim, after a night of bad dreams, stole forth to brush his
teeth in the morning chill a fair-coloured woman with
turquoise-studded head-gear drew him aside.

"The others have gone. They left thee this kilta as the promise was.
I do not love Sahibs, but thou wilt make us a charm in return for
it. We do not wish little Shamlegh to get a bad name on account of
the- accident. I am the Woman of Shamlegh." She looked him over with
bold, bright eyes, unlike the usual furtive glance of hillwomen.

"Assuredly. But it must be done in secret."

She raised the heavy kilta like a toy and slung it into her own hut.

"Out and bar the door! Let none come near till it is finished."

"But afterwards- we may talk?"

Kim tilted the kilta on the floor- a cascade of
Survey-instruments, books, diaries, letters, maps, and queerly scented
native correspondence. At the very bottom was an embroidered bag
covering a sealed, gilded, and illuminated document such as one King
sends to another. Kim caught his breath with delight, and reviewed the
situation from a Sahib's point of view.

"The books I do not want. Besides, they are logarithms- Survey, I
suppose." He laid them aside. "The letters I do not understand, but
Colonel Creighton will. They must all be kept. The maps- they draw
better maps than me- of course. All the native letters- oho!- and
particularly the murasla." He sniffed the embroidered bag. "That
must be from Hilas or Bunar, and Hurree Babu spoke truth. By Jove!
It is a fine haul. I wish Hurree could know.... The rest must go out
of the window." He fingered a superb prismatic compass and the shiny
top of a theodolite. But after all, a Sahib cannot very well steal,
and the things might be inconvenient evidence later. He sorted out
every scrap of manuscript, every map, and the native letters. They
made one softish slab. The three locked ferril-backed books, with five
worn pocketbooks, he put aside.

"The letters and the murasla I must carry inside my coat and under
my belt, and the hand-written books I must put into the food-bag. It
will be very heavy. No. I do not think there is anything more. If
there is, the coolies have thrown it down the khud, so thatt is all
right. Now you go too." He repacked the kilta with all he meant to
lose, and hove it up on to the window-sill. A thousand feet below
lay a long, lazy, round-shouldered bank of mist, as yet untouched by
the morning sun. A thousand feet below that was an hundred-year-old
pine-forest. He could see the green tops looking like a bed of moss
when a wind-eddy thinned the cloud.

"No! I don't think any one will go after you!"

The wheeling basket vomited its contents as it dropped. The
theodolite hit a jutting cliff-ledge and exploded like a shell; the
books, inkstand, paint-boxes, compasses, and rulers showed for a few
seconds like a swarm of bees. Then they vanished; and, though Kim,
hanging half out of window, strained his young ears, never a sound
came up from the gulf.

"Five hundred- a thousand rupees could not buy them," he thought
sorrowfully. "It was verree wasteful, but I have all their other
stuff- everything they did- I hope. Now how the deuce am I to tell
Hurree Babu, and whatt the deuce am I to do? And my old man is sick. I
must tie up the letters in oilcloth. That is something to do first-
else they will get all sweated.... And I am all alone!" He bound
them into a neat packet, swedging down the stiff, sticky oilcloth at
the corners, for his roving life had made him as methodical as an
old hunter in matters of the road. Then with double care he packed
away the books at the bottom of the food-bag.

The woman rapped at the door.

"But thou hast made no charm," she said, looking about.

"There is no need." Kim had completely overlooked the necessity
for a little patter-talk. The woman laughed at his confusion
irreverently.

"None- for thee. Thou canst cast a spell by the mere winking of an
eye. But think of us poor people when thou art gone! They were all too
drunk last night to hear a woman. Thou art not drunk?"

"I am a priest." Kim had recovered himself, and, the woman being
aught but unlovely, thought best to stand on his office.

"I warned them that the Sahibs will be angry and will make an
inquisition and a report to the Rajah. There is also the Babu with
them. Clerks have long tongues."

"Is that all thy trouble?" The plan rose fully formed in Kim's mind,
and he smiled ravishingly.

"Not all," quoth the woman, putting out a hard brown hand all
covered with turquoises set in silver.

"I can finish that in a breath," he went on quickly. "The Babu is
the very hakim (thou hast heard of him?) who was wandering among the
hills by Ziglaur. I know him."

"He will tell for the sake of a reward. Sahibs cannot distinguish
one hillman from another, but Babus have eyes for men- and women."

"Carry a word to him from me."

"There is nothing I would not do for thee."

He accepted the compliment calmly, as men must in lands where
women make the love, tore a leaf from a note-book, and with a patent
indelible pencil wrote in gross Shikast- the script that bad little
boys use when they write dirt on walls: "I have everything that they
have written: their pictures of the country, and many letters.
Especially the murasla. Tell me what to do. I am at
Shamlegh-under-the-Snow. The old man is sick."

"Take this to him. It will altogether shut his mouth. He cannot have
gone far."

"Indeed no. They are still in the forest across the spur. Our
children went to watch them when the light came, and have cried the
news as they moved."

Kim looked his astonishment; but from the edge of the
sheep-pasture floated a shrill, kite-like trill. A child tending
cattle had picked it up from a brother or sister on the far side of
the slope that commanded Chini valley.

"My husbands are also out there gathering wood." She drew a
handful of walnuts from her bosom, split one neatly, and began to eat.
Kim affected blank ignorance.

"Dost thou not know the meaning of the walnut-priest?" she said
coyly, and handed him the half-shells.

"Well thought of." He slipped the piece of paper between them
quickly. "Hast thou a little wax to close them on this letter?"

The woman sighed aloud, and Kim relented.

"There is no payment till service has been rendered. Carry this to
the Babu, and say it was sent by the Son of the Charm."

"Ai! Truly! Truly! By a magician- who is like a Sahib."

"Nay, Son of the Charm: and ask if there be any answer."

"But if he offer a rudeness? I- I am afraid."

Kim laughed. "He is, I have no doubt, very tired and very hungry.
The Hills make cold bedfellows. Hai, my"- it was on the tip of his
tongue to say Mother, but he turned it to Sister- "thou art a wise and
witty woman. By this time all the villages know what has befallen
the Sahibs- eh?"

"True. News was at Ziglaur by midnight, and by to-morrow should be
at Kotgarh. The villages are both afraid and angry."

"No need. Tell the villages to feed the Sahibs and pass them on,
in peace. We must get them quietly away from our valleys. To steal
is one thing- to kill another. The Babu will understand, and there
will be no after-complaints. Be swift. I must tend my master when he
wakes."

"So be it. After service- thou hast said?- comes the reward. I am
the Woman of Shamlegh, and I hold from the Rajah. I am no common
bearer of babes. Shamlegh is thine: hoof and horn and hide, milk and
butter. Take or leave."

She turned resolutely uphill, her silver necklaces clicking on her
broad breast, to meet the morning sun fifteen hundred feet above them.
This time Kim thought in the vernacular as he waxed down the oilskin
edges of the packets.

"How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is eternally
pestered by women? There was that girl at Akrola by the Ford; and
there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecot- not counting the
others- and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough,
but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts
indeed! Ho! ho! It is almonds in the Plains!"

He went out to levy on the village- not with a begging-bowl, which
might do for down-country, but in the manner of a prince. Shamlegh's
summer population is only three families- four women and eight or nine
men. They were all full of tinned meats and mixed drinks, from
ammoniated quinine to white vodka, for they had taken their full share
in the overnight loot. The neat Continental tents had been cut up
and shared long ago, and there were patent aluminum saucepans abroad.

But they considered the lama's presence a perfect safeguard
against all consequences, and impenitently brought Kim of their
best- even to a drink of chang- the barley-beer that comes from
Ladakh-way. Then they thawed out in the sun, and sat with their legs
hanging over infinite abysses, chattering, laughing, and smoking. They
judged India and its Government solely from their experience of
wandering Sahibs who had employed them or their friends as
shikarris. Kim heard tales of shots missed upon ibex, serow, or
markhor, by Sahibs twenty years in their graves- every detail
lighted from behind like twigs on tree-tops seen against lightning.
They told him of their little diseases, and, more important, the
diseases of their tiny, sure-footed cattle; of trips as far as
Kotgarh, where the strange missionaries live, and beyond even to
marvellous Simla, where the streets are paved with silver, and anyone,
look you, can get service with the Sahibs, who ride about in
two-wheeled carts and spend money with a spade. Presently, grave and
aloof, walking very heavily, the lama joined himself to the chatter
under the eaves, and they gave him great room. The thin air
refreshed him, and he sat on the edge of precipices with the best of
them, and, when talk languished, flung pebbles into the void. Thirty
miles away, as the eagle flies, lay the next range, seamed and
channelled and pitted with little patches of brush- forests, each a
day's dark march. Behind the village, Shamlegh hill itself cut off all
view to southward. It was like sitting in a swallow's nest under the
eaves of the roof of the world.

From time to time the lama stretched out his hand, and with a
little, low-voiced prompting would point out the road to Spiti and
north across the Parungla.

"Beyond, where the hills lie thickest, lies De-ch'en" (he meant
Han-le), "the great Monastery. s'Tag-stan-ras-ch'en built it, and of
him there runs this tale." Whereupon he told it: a fantastic piled
narrative of bewitchment and miracles that set Shamlegh agasping.
Turning west a little, he speered for the green hills of Kulu, and
sought Kailung under the glaciers. "For thither came I in the old, old
days. From Leh I came, over the Baralachi."

"Yes, yes; we know it," said the far-faring people of Shamlegh.

"And I slept two nights with the priests of Kailung. These are the
hills of my delight! Shadows blessed above all other shadows! There my
eyes opened on this world; there my eyes were opened to this world;
there I found Enlightenment; and there I girt my loins for my
Search. Out of the Hills I came- the high Hills and the strong
winds. Oh, just is the Wheel!" He blessed them in detail- the great
glaciers, the naked rocks, the piled moraines and tumbled shale; dry
upland, hidden salt-lake, age-old timber and fruitful water-shot
valley one after the other, as a dying man blesses his folk, and Kim
marvelled at his passion.

"Yes- yes. There is no place like our Hills," said the people of
Shamlegh. And they fell to wondering how a man could live in the hot
terrible Plains where the cattle run as big as elephants, unfit to
plough on a hillside; where village touches village, they had heard,
for a hundred miles; where folk went about stealing in gangs, and what
the robbers spared the Police carried utterly away.

So the still forenoon wore through, and at the end of it Kim's
messenger dropped from the steep pasture as unbreathed as when she had
set out.

"I sent a word to the hakim," Kim explained, while she made
reverence.

"He joined himself to the idolaters? Nay, I remember he did a
healing upon one of them. He has acquired merit, though the healed
employed his strength for evil. Just is the Wheel! What of the hakim?"

"I feared that thou hadst been bruised and- and I knew he was wise."
Kim took the waxed walnut-shell and read in English on the back of his
note: "'Your favour received. Cannot get away from present company
at present, but shall take them into Simla. After which, hope to
rejoin you. Inexpedient to follow angry gentlemen. Return by same road
you came, and will overtake. Highly gratified about correspondence due
to my forethought.' He says, Holy One, that he will escape from the
idolaters, and will return to us. Shall we wait awhile at Shamlegh,
then?"

The lama looked long and lovingly upon the hills and shook his head.

"That may not be, chela. From my bones outward I do desire it, but
it is forbidden. I have seen the Cause of Things."

"Why? When the Hills give thee back thy strength day by day?
Remember we were weak and fainting down below there in the Doon."

"I became strong to do evil and to forget. A brawler and a
swashbuckler upon the hillsides was I." Kim bit back a smile. "Just
and perfect is the Wheel, swerving not a hair. When I was a man- a
long time ago- I did pilgrimage to Guru Ch'wan among the poplars"
(he pointed Bhotanwards), "where they keep the Sacred Horse."

"Quiet, be quiet!" said Shamlegh, all arow. "He speaks of
Jamlin-nin-k'or, The Horse That Can Go Round The World In a Day."

"I speak to my chela only," said the lama, in gentle reproof, and
they scattered like frost on south eaves of a morning. "I did not seek
truth in those days, but the talk of doctrine. All illusion! I drank
the beer and ate the bread of Guru Ch'wan. Next day one said: 'We go
out to fight Sangor Gutok down the valley to discover (mark again
how Lust is tied to Anger!) which abbot shall bear rule in the valley,
and take the profit of the prayers they print at Sangor Gutok.' I
went, and we fought a day."

"But how, Holy One?"

"With our long pencases as I could have shown.... I say, we fought
under the poplars, both abbots and all the monks, and one laid open my
forehead to the bone. See!" He tilted back his cap and showed a
puckered silvery scar. "Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the
scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it was dealt and the
face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that
which thou didst see- strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The
idolater's blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul: my
soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of
illusion. Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the
Cause of Things, or trace the running grass-roots of Evil. I strove
all the long night."

"But, Holy One, thou art innocent of all evil. May I be thy
sacrifice!"

Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man's sorrow, and Mahbub
Ali's phrase slipped out unawares.

"In the dawn," he went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking
between the slow sentences, "came enlightenment. It is here.... I am
an old man... hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my Hills.
Three years I travelled through Hind, but- can earth be stronger
than Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the Hills and the snow of
the Hills, from below there. I said, and it is true, my Search is
sure. So, at the Kulu woman's house I turned hillward,
over-persuaded by myself. There is no blame to the hakim. He-
following Desire- foretold that the Hills would make me strong. They
strengthened me to do evil to forget my Search. I delighted in life
and the lust of life. I desired strong slopes to climb. I cast about
to find them. I measured the strength of my body, which is evil,
against the high hills. I made a mock of thee when thy breath came
short under Jamnotri. I jested when thou wouldst not face the snow
of the pass."

"But what harm? I was afraid. It was just. I am not a hillman; and I
loved thee for thy new strength."

"More than once I remember," he rested his cheek dolefully on his
hand, "I sought thy praise and the hakim's for the mere strength of my
legs. Thus evil followed evil till the cup was full. Just is the
Wheel! All Hind for three years did me all honour. From the Fountain
of Wisdom in the Wonder House to"- he smiled- "a little child
playing by a big gun- the world prepared my road. And why?"

"Because we loved thee. It is only the fever of the blow. I myself
am still sick and shaken."

"No! It was because I was upon the Way- tuned as are sinen (cymbals)
to the purpose of the Law. I departed from that ordinance. The tune
was broken: followed the punishment. In my own Hills, on the edge of
my own country, in the very place of my evil desire, comes the buffet-
here!" (He touched his brow.) "As a novice is beaten when he misplaces
the cups, so am I beaten, who was Abbot of Suchzen. No word, look you,
but a blow, chela."

"But the Sahibs did not know thee, Holy One?"

"We were well matched. Ignorance and Lust met Ignorance and Lust
upon the road, and they begat Anger. The blow was a sign to me, who am
no better than a strayed yak, that my place is not here. Who can
read the Cause of an act is half-way to Freedom! 'Back to the path,'
says the Blow. 'The Hills are not for thee. Thou canst not choose
Freedom and go in bondage to the delight of life.'"

"If we had never met that thrice-cursed Russian!"

"Our Lord Himself cannot make the Wheel swing backward. And for my
merit that I had acquired I gain yet another sign." He put his hand in
his bosom, and drew forth the Wheel of Life. "Look! I considered
this after I had meditated. There remains untorn by the idolater no
more than the breadth of my finger-nail."

"I see."

"So much, then, is the span of my life in this body. I have served
the Wheel all my days. Now the Wheel serves me. But for the merit I
have acquired in guiding thee upon the Way, there would have been
added to me yet another life ere I had found my River. Is it plain,
chela?"

Kim stared at the brutally disfigured chart. From left to right
diagonally the rent ran- from the Eleventh House where Desire gives
birth to the Child (as it is drawn by Tibetans)- across the human
and animal worlds, to the Fifth House- the empty House of the
Senses. The logic was unanswerable.

"Before our Lord won enlightenment," the lama folded all away with
reverence, "He was tempted. I too have been tempted, but it is
finished. The Arrow fell in the Plains- not in the Hills. Therefore,
what make we here?"

"Shall we at least wait for the hakim?"

"I know how long I live in this body. What can a hakim do?"

"But thou art all sick and shaken. Thou canst not walk."

"How can I be sick if I see Freedom?" He rose unsteadily to his
feet.

"Then I must get food from the village. Oh, the weary Road!" Kim
felt that he too needed rest.

"That is lawful. Let us eat and go. The Arrow fell in Plains...
but I yielded to Desire. Make ready, chela."

Kim turned to the woman with the turquoise head-gear who had been
idly pitching pebbles over the cliff. She smiled very kindly.

"I found him like a strayed buffalo in a corn-field- the Babu;
snorting and sneezing with cold. He was so hungry that he forgot his
dignity and gave me sweet words. The Sahibs have nothing." She flung
out an empty palm. "One is very sick about the stomach. Thy work?"

Kim nodded, with a bright eye.

"I spoke to the Bengali first- and to the people of a near-by
village after. The Sahibs will be given food as they need it- nor will
the people ask money. The plunder is already distributed. That makes
lying speeches to the Sahibs. Why does he not leave them?"

"Out of the greatness of his heart."

"'Was never a Bengali yet had one bigger than a dried walnut. But it
is no matter.... Now as to walnuts. After service comes reward. I have
said the village is thine."

"It is my loss," Kim began. "Even now I had planned desirable things
in my heart which"- there is no need to go through the compliments
proper to these occasions. He sighed deeply... "But my master, led
by a vision- "

"Huh! What can old eyes see except a full begging-bowl?"

"- turns from this village to the Plains again."

"Bid him stay."

Kim shook his head. "I know my Holy One, and his rage if he be
crossed," he replied impressively. "His curses shake the Hills."

"Pity they did not save him from a broken head! I heard that thou
wast the tiger-hearted one who smote the Sahib. Let him dream a little
longer. Stay!"

"Hillwoman," said Kim, with austerity that could not harden the
outlines of his young oval face, "these matters are too high for
thee."

"The Gods be good to us! Since when have men and women been other
than men and women?"

"A priest is a priest. He says he will go upon this hour. I am his
chela, and I go with him. We need food for the Road. He is an honoured
guest in all the villages, but"- he broke into a pure boyish grin-
"the food here is good. Give me some."

"What if I do not give it thee? I am the woman of this village."

"Then I curse thee- a little- not greatly, but enough to
remember." He could not help smiling.

"Thou hast cursed me already by the down-dropped eyelash and the
uplifted chin. Curses? What should I care for mere words?" She
clenched her hands upon her bosom.... But I would not have thee to
go in anger, thinking hardly of me- a gatherer of cow-dung and grass
at Shamlegh, but still a woman of substance."

"I think nothing," said Kim, "but that I am grieved to go, for I
am very tired, and that we need food. Here is the bag."

The woman snatched it angrily. "I was foolish," said she. "Who is
thy woman in the Plains? Fair or black? I was fair once. Laughest
thou? Once, long ago, if thou canst believe, a Sahib looked on me with
favour. Once, long ago, I wore European clothes at the Mission-house
yonder." She pointed towards Kotgarh. "Once, long ago, I was
Ker-lis-ti-an and spoke English- as the Sahibs speak it. Yes. My Sahib
said he would return and wed me- yes, wed me. He went away- I had
nursed him when he was sick- but he never returned. Then I saw that
the Gods of the Kerlistians lied, and I went back to my own people....
I have never set eyes on a Sahib since. (Do not laugh at me. The fit
is past, little priestling.) Thy face and thy walk and thy fashion
of speech put me in mind of my Sahib, though thou art only a wandering
mendicant to whom I give a dole. Curse me? Thou canst neither curse
nor bless!" She set her hands on her hips and laughed bitterly. "Thy
Gods are lies; thy works are lies; thy words are lies. There are no
Gods under all the heavens. I know it.... But for a while I thought it
was my Sahib come back, and he was my God. Yes, once I made music on a
pianno in the Mission-house at Kotgarh. Now I give alms to priests who
are heatthen." She wound up with the English word, and tied the
mouth of the brimming bag.

"I wait for thee, chela," said the lama, leaning against the
door-post.

The woman swept the tall figure with her eyes. "He walk? He cannot
cover half a mile. Whither would old bones go?"

At this Kim, already perplexed by the lama's collapse, and
foreseeing the weight of the bag, fairly lost his temper.

"What is it to thee, woman of ill-omen, where he goes?"

"Nothing- but something to thee, priest with a Sahib's face. Wilt
thou carry him on thy shoulders?"

"I go to the Plains. None must hinder my return. I have wrestled
with my soul till I am strengthless. The stupid body is spent, and
we are far from the Plains."

"Behold!" she said simply, and drew aside to let Kim see his own
utter helplessness. "Curse me. May be it will give him strength.
Make a charm! Call on thy great God. Thou art a priest." She turned
away.

The lama had squatted limply, still holding by the door-post. One
cannot strike down an old man that he recovers again like a boy in a
night. Weakness bowed him to the earth, but his eyes that hung on
Kim were alive and imploring.

"It is all well," said Kim. "It is the thin air that weakens thee.
In a little while we go! It is the mountain-sickness I too am a little
while  at stomach," ... and he knelt and comforted with such poor
words as came first to his lips. Then the woman returned, more erect
than ever.

"Thy Gods useless, heh? Try mine. I am the Woman of Shamlegh." She
hailed hoarsely, and there came out of a cow-pen her two husbands
and three others with a dooli, the rude native litter of the Hills,
that they use for carrying the sick and for visits of state. "These
cattle," she did not condescend to look at them, "are thine for so
long as thou shalt need."

"But we will not go Simla-way. We will not go near the Sahibs!"
cried the first husband.

"They will not run away as the others did, nor will they steal
baggage. Two I know for weaklings. Stand to the rear-pole, Sonoo and
Taree." They obeyed swiftly. "Lower now, and lift in that holy man.
I will see to the village and your virtuous wives till ye return."

"When will that be?"

"Ask the priests. Do not pester me. Lay the food-bag at the foot, it
balances better so."

"Oh, Holy One, thy Hills are kinder than our Plains!" cried Kim,
relieved, as the lama tottered to the litter. "It is a very king's
bed- a place of honour and ease. And we owe it to- "

"A woman of ill-omen. I need thy blessings as much as I do thy
curses. It is my order and none of thine. Lift and away! Here! Hast
thou money for the road?"

She beckoned Kim to her hut, and stooped above a battered English
cash-box under her cot.

"I do not need anything," said Kim, angered when he should have been
grateful. "I am already rudely loaded with favours."

She looked up with a curious smile and laid a hand on his
shoulder. "At least, thank me. I am foul-faced and a hillwoman, but,
as thy talk goes, I have acquired merit. Shall I show thee how the
Sahibs render thanks?" and her hard eyes softened.

"I am but a wandering priest," said Kim, his eyes lighting in
answer. "Thou needest neither my blessings nor my curses."

"Nay. But for one little moment- thou canst overtake the dooli in
ten strides- if thou wast a Sahib, shall I show thee what thou wouldst
do?"

"How if I guess, though?" said Kim, and putting his arm round her
waist, he kissed her on the cheek, adding in English: "Thank you
verree much, my dear."

Kissing is practically unknown among Asiatics, which may have been
the reason that she leaned back with wide-open eyes and a face of
panic.

"Next time," Kim went on, "you must not be so sure of your
heatthen priests. Now I say good-bye." He held out his hand
English-fashion. She took it mechanically. "Good-bye, my dear."

"Good-bye, and- and"- she was remembering her English words one by
one- "you will come back again? Good-bye, and- thee God bless you."

Half an hour later, as the creaking litter jolted up the hill path
that leads south-easterly from Shamlegh, Kim saw a tiny figure at
the hut door waving a white rag.

"She has acquired merit beyond all others," said the lama. "For to
set a man upon the way to Freedom is half as great as though she had
herself found it."

"Umm," said Kim thoughtfully, considering the past. "It may be
that I have acquired merit also.... At least she did not treat me like
a child." He hitched the front of his robe, where lay the slab of
documents and maps, restowed the precious food-bag at the lama's feet,
laid his hand on the litter edge, and buckled down to the slow pace of
the grunting husbands.

"These also acquire merit," said the lama, after three miles.

"More than that, they shall be paid in silver," quoth Kim. The Woman
of Shamlegh had given it to him; and it was only fair, he argued, that
her men should earn it back again.

                              15


            I'd not give room for an Emperor-
               I'd hold my road for a King.
            To the Triple Crown I'd not bow down-
               But this is a different thing!
            I'll not fight with the Powers of Air-
               Sentries pass him through!
            Drawbridge let fall- He's the Lord of us all-
               The Dreamer whose dream came true!
                         " THE  SIEGE  OF  THE  FAIRIES "


Two hundred miles north of Chini, on the blue shale of Ladakh,
lies Yankling Sahib, the merry-minded man, spy-glassing wrathfully
across the ridges for some sign of his pet tracker- a man from
Ao-chung. But that renegade, with a new Mannlicher rifle and two
hundred cartridges, is elsewhere, shooting musk-deer for the market,
and Yankling Sahib will learn next season how very ill he has been.

Up the valleys of Bushahr- the far-beholding eagles of the Himalayas
swerve at his new blue-and-white gored umbrella- hurries a Bengali,
once fat and well-looking, now lean and weather-worn. He has
received the thanks of two foreigners of distinction, piloted not
unskilfully to Mashobra tunnel which leads to the great and gay
capital of India. It was not his fault that, blanketed by wet mists,
he conveyed them past the telegraph-station and European colony of
Kotgarh. It was not his fault, but that of the Gods, of whom he
discoursed so engagingly, that he led them into the borders of
Nahan, where the Rajah of that state mistook them for deserting
British soldiery. Hurree Babu explained the greatness and glory, in
their own country, of his companions, till the drowsy kinglet
smiled. He explained it to every one who asked- many times- aloud-
variously. He begged food, arranged accommodation, proved a skilful
leech for an injury of the groin- such a blow as one may receive
rolling down a rock-covered hillside in the dark- and in all things
indispensable. The reason of his friendliness did him credit. With
millions of fellow-serfs, he had learned to look upon Russia as the
great deliverer from the North. He was a fearful man. He had been
afraid that he could not save his illustrious employers from the anger
of an excited peasantry. He himself would just as lief hit a holy
man as not, but.... He was deeply grateful and sincerely rejoiced that
he had done his "little possible" towards bringing their venture to-
barring the lost baggage- a successful issue. He had forgotten the
blows; denied that any blows had been dealt that unseemly first
night under the pines. He asked neither pension nor retaining fee,
but, if they deemed him worthy, would they write him a testimonial? It
might be useful to him later, if others, their friends, came over
the Passes. He begged them to remember him in their future
greatnesses, for he "opined subtly" that he, even he, Mohendro Lal
Dutt, M.A. of Calcutta, had "done the state some service."

They gave him a certificate praising his courtesy, helpfulness,
and unerring skill as a guide. He put it in his waist-belt and
sobbed with emotion; they had endured so many dangers together. He led
them at high noon along crowded Simla Mall to the Alliance Bank of
Simla, where they wished to establish their identity. Thence he
vanished like a dawn-cloud on Jakko.

Behold him, too fine drawn to sweat, too pressed to vaunt the
drugs in his little brass-bound box, ascending Shamlegh slope, a
just man made perfect. Watch him, all Babudom laid aside, smoking at
noon on a cot, while a woman with turquoise-studded head-gear points
south-easterly across the bare grass. Litters, she says, do not travel
as fast as single men, but his birds should now be in the Plains.
The holy man would not stay though Lispeth pressed him. The Babu
groans heavily, girds up his huge loins, and is off again. He does not
care to travel after dusk; but his days' marches- there is none to
enter them in a book- would astonish folk who mock at his race. Kindly
villagers, remembering the Dacca drug-vendor of two months ago, give
him shelter against evil spirits of the wood. He dreams of Bengali
Gods, University text-books of education, and the Royal Society,
London, England. Next dawn the bobbing blue-and-white umbrella goes
forward.

On the edge of the Doon, Mussoorie well behind them and the Plains
spread out in golden dust before, rests a worn litter in which- all
the Hills know it- lies a sick lama who seeks a River for his healing.
Villages have almost come to blows over the honour of bearing it,
for not only has the lama given them blessings, but his disciple
good money- full one-third Sahibs' prices. Twelve miles a day has
the dooli travelled, as the greasy, rubbed pole-ends show, and by
roads that few Sahibs use. Over the Nilang Pass in storm when the
driven snow-dust filled every fold of the impassive lama's drapery;
between the black horns of Raieng where they heard the whistle of
the wild goats through the clouds; pitching and strained on the
shale below; hard-held between shoulder and clenched jaw when they
rounded the hideous curves of the Cut Road under Bhagirati; swinging
and creaking to the steady jog-trot of the descent into the Valley
of the Waters; pressed along the steamy levels of that locked
valley; up, up and out again, to meet the roaring gusts off Kedarnath;
set down of mid-days in the dun gloom of kindly oak-forests; passed
from village to village in dawn-chill, when even devotees may be
forgiven for swearing at impatient holy men; or by torchlight, when
the least fearful think of ghosts- the dooli has reached her last
stage. The little hill-folk sweat in the modified heat of the lower
Sewaliks, and gather round the priests for their blessing and their
wage.

"Ye have acquired merit," says the lama. "Merit greater than your
knowing. And ye will return to the Hills," he sighs.

"Surely. The high hills as soon as may be." The bearer rubs his
shoulder, drinks water, spits it out again, and readjusts his grass
sandal. Kim- his face is drawn and tired- pays very small silver
from his belt, heaves out the food-bag, crams an oilskin packet-
they are holy writings- into his bosom, and helps the lama to his
feet. The peace has come again into the old man's eyes, and he does
not look for the hills to fall down and crush him as he did that
terrible night when they were delayed by the flooded river.

The men pick up the dooli and swing out of sight between the scrub
clumps.

The lama raises a hand toward the rampart of the Himalayas. "Not
with you, O blessed among all hills, fell the Arrow of Our Lord! And
never shall I breathe your air again!"

"But thou art ten times the stronger man in this good air," say Kim,
for to his wearied soul appeal the well-cropped, kindly plains. "Here,
or hereabouts, fell the Arrow, yes. We will go very softly, perhaps
a kos a day, for the Search is sure. But the bag weighs heavy."

"Ay, our Search is sure. I have come out of great temptation."


It was never more than a couple of miles a day now, and Kim's
shoulders bore all the weight of it- the burden of an old man, the
burden of the heavy food-bag with the locked books, the load of the
writings on his heart, and the details of the daily routine. He begged
in the dawn, set blankets for the lama's meditation, held the weary
head on his lap through the noon-day heats, fanning away the flies
till his wrist ached, begged again in the evenings, and rubbed the
lama's feet, who rewarded him with promise of Freedom- to-day,
to-morrow, or, at furthest, the next day.

"Never was such a chela. I doubt at times whether Ananda more
faithfully nursed Our Lord. And thou art a Sahib? When I was a man-
a long time ago- I forgot that. Now I look upon thee often, and
every time I remember that thou art a Sahib. It is strange."

"Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with
this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the other foot. It vexes me. I am
not a Sahib. I am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders."

"Patience a little! We reach Freedom together. Then thou and I, upon
the far bank of the River, will look back upon our lives as in the
Hills we saw our days' marches laid out behind us. Perhaps I was
once a Sahib."

"'Was never a Sahib like thee, I swear it."

"I am certain the Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House was in
past life a very wise abbot. But even his spectacles do not make my
eyes see. There fall shadows when I would look steadily. No matter- we
know the tricks of the poor stupid carcass- shadow changing to another
shadow. I am bound by the illusion of Time and Space. How far came
we to-day in the flesh?"

"Perhaps half a kos." Three-quarters of a mile, and it was a weary
march.

"Half a kos. Ha! I went ten thousand thousand in the spirit. How
we are all lapped and swathed and swaddled in these senseless things."
He looked at his thin blue-veined hand that found the beads so
heavy. "Chela, hast thou never a wish to leave me?"

Kim thought of the oilskin packet and the books in the food-bag.
If some one duly authorised would only take delivery of them the Great
Game might play itself for aught he then cared. He was tired and hot
in his head, and a cough that came from the stomach worried him.

"No," he said almost sternly. "I am not a dog or a snake to bite
when I have learned to love."

"Thou art too tender for me."

"Not that either. I have moved in one matter without consulting
thee. I have sent a message to the Kulu woman by that woman who gave
us the goat's milk this morn, saying that thou wast a little feeble
and would need a litter. I beat myself in my mind that I did not do it
when we entered the Doon. We stay in this place till the litter
returns."

"I am content. She is a woman with a heart of gold, as thou
sayest, but a talker- something of a talker."

"She will not weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my
heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee." An
hysterical catch rose in his throat. "I have walked thee too far; I
have not picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the
heat; I have talked to people on the road and left thee alone.... I
have- I have... Hai mai! But I love thee... and it is all too late....
I was a child.... Oh why was I not a man!..." Overborne by strain,
fatigue, and the weight beyond his years, Kim broke down and sobbed at
the lama's feet.

"What a to-do is here," said the old man gently. "Thou has never
stepped a hair's breadth from the Way of Obedience. Neglect me? Child,
I have lived on thy strength as an old tree lives on the lime of a new
wall. Day by day since Shamlegh down, I have stolen strength from
thee. Therefore, not through any sin of thine art thou weakened. It is
the Body- the silly, stupid Body- that speaks now. Not the assured
Soul. Be comforted! Know at least the devils that thou fightest.
They are earth-born- children of illusion. We will go to the woman
from Kulu. She shall acquire merit in housing us, and specially in
tending me. Thou shalt run free till strength returns. I had forgotten
the stupid Body. If there be any blame, I bear it. But we are too
close to the Gates of Deliverance to weigh blame. I could praise thee,
but what need? In a little- in a very little- we shall sit beyond
all needs.

And so he petted and comforted Kim with wise saws and grave texts on
that little-understood beast, our Body, who, being but a delusion,
insists on posing as the Soul, to the darkening of the Way, and the
immense multiplication of unnecessary devils.

"Hai! hai! Let us talk of the woman from Kulu. Think you she will
ask another charm for her grandsons? When I was a young man, a very
long time ago, I was plagued with these vapours- and some others-
and I went to an abbot- a very holy man and a seeker after Truth,
though then I knew it not. Sit up and listen, child of my soul! My
tale was told. Said he to me, 'Chela, know this. There are many lies
in the world, and not a few liars, but there are no liars like our
bodies, except it be the sensations of our bodies.' Considering this I
was comforted, and of his great favour he suffered me to drink tea
in his presence. Suffer me now to drink tea, for I am thirsty."

With a laugh above his tears, Kim kissed the lama's feet, and went
about tea-making.

"Thou leanest on me in the body, Holy One, but I lean on thee for
some other things. Dost know it?"

"I have guessed maybe," and the lama's eyes twinkled. "We must
change that."

So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of
importance, paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba's pet palanquin
sent twenty miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in
charge, and when they reached the disorderly order of the long white
rambling house behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.

Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments:
"What is the good of an old woman's advice to an old man? I told thee-
I told thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the chela. How didst thou
do it? Never answer me! I know. He has been running among the women.
Look at his eyes- hollow and sunk- and the Betraying Line from the
nose down! He has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a priest, too!"

Kim looked up over-weary to smile, shaking his head in denial.

"Do not jest," said the lama. "That time is done. We are here upon
great matters. A sickness of soul took me in the Hills, and him a
sickness of the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength-
eating him."

"Children together- young and old," she sniffed, but forbore to make
any new jokes. "May this present hospitality restore ye. Hold awhile
and I will come to gossip of the high good Hills."

At evening time- her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need to
go on inspection round the farm- she won to the meat of the matter,
explained low-voicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded wisely
together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing
soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get food.
 "I know- I know. Who but I?" she cackled. "We who go down to the
burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the River of
Life with full water-jars- yes, brimming water-jars. I did the boy
wrong. He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat the
young daily. 'Stands now we must restore him."

"Thou hast many times acquired merit- "

"My merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men who
do not ask 'Who cooked this?' Now if it were stored up for my
grandson- "

"He that had the belly-pain?"

"To think the Holy One remembers that! I must tell his mother. It is
most singular honour! 'He that had the belly-pain'- straightway the
Holy One remembered. She will be proud."

"My chela is to me as a son to the unenlightened."

"Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years.
If a child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother
is far enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of
giving the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or
the wind. And since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the
Holy One was here, maybe I offended in pressing for charms."

"Sister," said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist
monk may sometimes employ towards a nun, "if charms comfort thee- "

"They are better than ten thousand doctors."

"I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Suchzen will make
as many as thou mayest desire. I have never seen thy face- "

"That even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for a gain.
Hee! hee!"

"But as he who sleeps there said," he nodded at the shut door of the
guest-chamber across the forecourt, "thou hast a heart of gold.... And
he is in the spirit my very 'grandson' to me."

"Good! I am the Holy One's cow." This was pure Hinduism, but the
lama never heeded. "I am old. I have borne sons in the body. Oh,
once I could please men! Now I can cure them." He heard her armlets
tinkle as though she bared arms for action. "I will take over the
boy and dose him, and stuff him, and make him all whole. Hai! hai!
We old people know something yet."

Wherefore when Kim, aching in every bone, opened his eyes, and would
go to the cook-house to get his master's food, he found strong
coercion about him, and a veiled old figure at the door, flanked by
the grizzled manservant, who told him precisely the very things that
he was on no account to do.

"Thou must have? Thou shalt have nothing. What? A locked box in
which to keep holy books? Oh, that is another matter. Heavens forbid I
should come between a priest and his prayers! It shall be brought, and
thou shalt keep the key."

They pushed the coffer under his cot, and Kim shut away Mahbub's
pistol, the oilskin packet of letters, and the locked books and
diaries, with a groan of relief. For some absurd reason their weight
on his shoulders was nothing to their weight on his poor mind. His
neck ached under it of nights.

"Thine is a sickness uncommon in youth these days: since young
folk have given up tending their betters. The remedy is sleep, and
certain drugs," said the Sahiba; and he was glad to give himself up to
the blankness that half menaced and half soothed him.

She brewed drinks, in some mysterious Asiatic equivalent to the
still-room- drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She
stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after
they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it
by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his
scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the
authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants,
calves, dogs, hens, and the like, fetched a wide compass by those
parts. Best of all, when the body was cleared, she cut out from the
mass of poor relations that crowded the back of the buildings-
household dogs, we name them- a cousin's widow, skilled in what
Europeans, who know nothing about it, call massage. And the two of
them, laying him east and west, that the mysterious earth-currents
which thrill the clay of our bodies might help and not hinder, took
him to pieces all one long afternoon- bone by bone, muscle by
muscle, ligament by ligament, and lastly, nerve by nerve. Kneaded to
irresponsible pulp, half hypnotised by the perpetual flick and
readjustment of the uneasy chudders that veiled their eyes, Kim slid
ten thousand miles into slumber- thirty-six hours of it- sleep that
soaked like rain after drought.

Then she fed him, and the house spun to her clamour. She caused
fowls to be slain; she sent for vegetables, and the sober,
slow-thinking gardener, nigh as old as she, sweated for it; she took
spices, and milk, and onion, with little fish from the brooks- anon
limes for sherbets, fat quails of the pit, then chicken-livers upon
a skewer, with sliced ginger between.

"I have seen something of this world," she said over the crowded
trays, "and there are but two sorts of women in it- those who take the
strength out of a man and those who put it back. Once I was that
one, and now I am this. Nay- do not play the priestling with me.
Mine was but a jest. If it does not hold good now, it will when thou
takest the road again. Cousin"- this to the poor relation, never
wearied of extolling her patroness's charity- "he is getting a bloom
on the skin of a new-curried horse. Our work is like polishing
jewels to be thrown to a dance-girl- eh?"

Kim sat up and smiled. The terrible weakness had dropped from him
like an old shoe. His tongue itched for free speech again, and but a
week back the lightest word clogged it like ashes. The pain in his
neck (he must have caught it from the lama) had gone with the heavy
dengue-aches and the evil taste in the mouth. The two old women, a
little, but not much, more careful about their veils now, clucked as
merrily as the hens that had entered pecking through the open door.

"Where is my Holy One?" he demanded.

"Hear him! Thy Holy One is well," she snapped viciously. "Though
that is none of his merit. Knew I a charm to make him wise, I'd sell
my jewels and buy it. To refuse good food that I cooked myself- and go
roving into the fields for two nights on an empty belly- and to tumble
into a brook at the end of it- call you that holiness? Then, when he
has nearly broken what thou hast left of my heart with anxiety, he
tells me that he has acquired merit. Oh, how like are all men! No,
that was not it- he tells me that he is freed from all sin. I could
have told him that before he wetted himself all over. He is well
now- this happened a week ago- but burn me such holiness! A babe of
three would do better. Do not fret thyself for the Holy One. He
keeps both eyes on thee when he is not wading our brooks."

"I do not remember to have seen him. I remember that the days and
nights passed like bars of white and black, opening and shutting. I
was not sick: I was only tired."

"A lethargy that comes by right some few score years later. But it
is all done now."

"Maharanee," Kim began, but led by the look in her eye, changed it
to the title of plain love- "Mother, I owe my life to thee. How
shall I make thanks? Ten thousand blessings upon thy house and- "

"The house be unblessed." (It is impossible to give exactly the
old lady's word.) "Thank the Gods as a priest if thou wilt, but
thank me if thou carest as a son. Heavens above! Have I shifted thee
and lifted thee and slapped and twisted thy ten toes to find texts
flung at my head? Somewhere a mother must have borne thee to break her
heart. What used thou to her- son?"

"I had no mother, my mother," said Kim. "She died, they tell me,
when I was young."

"Hai mai! Then none can say I have robbed her of any right if-
when thou takest the road again and this house is but one of a
thousand used for shelter and forgotten, after an easy-flung blessing.
No matter. I need no blessings, but- but-" She stamped her foot at the
poor relation: "Take up the trays to the house. What is the good of
stale food in the room, oh woman of ill-omen?"

"I ha- have borne a son in my time too, but he died," whimpered
the bowed sister-figure behind the chudder. "Thou knowest he died! I
only waited for the order to take away the tray."

"It is I that am the woman of ill-omen," cried the old lady
penitently. "We that go down to the chattris (the big umbrellas
above the burning-ghats where the priests take their last dues) clutch
hard at the bearers of the chattis (water-jars- young folk full of the
pride of life, she meant; but the pun is clumsy). When one cannot
dance in the festival one must e'en look out of the window, and
grandmothering takes all a woman's time. Thy master gives me all the
charms I now desire for my daughter's eldest, by reason- is it?-
that he is wholly free from sin. The hakim is brought very low these
days. He goes about poisoning my servants for lack of their betters."

"What hakim, mother?"

"That very Dacca man who gave me the pill which rent me in three
pieces. He cast up like a strayed camel a week ago, vowing that he and
thou had been blood-brothers together up Kulu-way, and feigning
great anxiety for thy health. He was very thin and hungry, so I gave
orders to have him stuffed too- him and his anxiety!"

"I would see him if he is here."

"He eats five times a day, and lances boils for my hinds to save
himself from an apoplexy. He is so full of anxiety for thy health that
he sticks to the cook-house door and stays himself with scraps. He
will keep. We shall never get rid of him."

"Send him here, mother"- the twinkle returned to Kim's eye for a
flash- "and I will try."

"I'll send him, but to chase him off is an ill turn. At least he had
the sense to fish the Holy One out of the brook; thus, as the Holy One
did not say, acquiring merit."

"He is a very wise hakim. Send him, mother."

"Priest praising priest? A miracle! If he is any friend of thine (ye
squabbled at your last meeting) I'll hale him here with horse-ropes
and- and give him a caste-dinner afterwards, my son.... Get up and see
the world! This lying abed is the mother of seventy devils... my son!"

She trotted forth to raise a typhoon off the cook-house, and
almost on her shadow rolled in the Babu, robed as to the shoulders
like a Roman emperor, jowled like Titus, bareheaded, with new
patent-leather shoes, in highest condition of fat, exuding joy and
salutations.

"By Jove, Mister O'Hara, but I am jolly glad to see you. I will
kindly shut the door. It is a pity you are sick. Are you very sick?"

"The papers- the papers from the kilta. The maps and the murasla!"
He held out the key impatiently; for the present need on his soul
was to get rid of the loot.

"You are quite right. That is correct departmental view to take. You
have got everything?"

"All was handwritten in the kilta I took. The rest I threw down
the hill." He could hear the key's grate in the lock, the sticky
pull of the slow-rending oilcloth, and a quick shuffling of papers. He
had been annoyed out of all reason by the knowledge that they lay
below him through the sick idle days- a burden incommunicable. For
that reason the blood tingled through his body, when Hurree,
skipping elephantinely, shook hands again.

"This is fine! This is finest! Mister O'Hara! You have- ha! ha!-
swiped the whole bag of tricks- locks, stocks, and barrels. They
told me it was eight months' work gone up the spouts! By Jove, how
they beat me!... Look, here is the letter from Hilas!" He intoned a
line or two of Court Persian, which is the language of authorised
and unauthorised diplomacy. "Mister Rajah Sahib has just about put his
foot in the holes. He will have to explain offeecially how the
deuce-an'-all he is writing love-letters to the Czar. And they are
very clever maps... and there is three or four Prime Ministers of
these parts implicated by the correspondence. By Gad, Sar! The British
Government will change the succession in Hilas and Bunar, and nominate
new heirs to the throne. 'Treason most base'... but you do not
understand? Eh?"

"Are they in thy hands?" said Kim. It was all he cared for.

"Just you jolly well bet yourself they are." He stowed the entire
trove about his body, as only Orientals can. "They are going up to the
office, too. The old lady thinks I am permanent fixture here, but I
shall go away with these straight off- immediately. Mr. Lurgan will be
proud man. You are offeecially subordinate to me, but I shall embody
your name in my verbal report. It is a pity we are not allowed written
reports. We Bengalis excel in thee exact science." He tossed back
the key and showed the box empty.

"Good. That is good. I was very tired. My Holy One was sick, too.
And did he fall into- "

"Oah yess. I am his good friend, I tell you. He was behaving very
strange when I came down after you, and I thought perhaps he might
have the papers. I followed him on his meditations, and to discuss
ethnological points also. You see, I am verree small person here
nowadays, in comparison with all his charms. By Jove, O'Hara, do you
know, he is afflicted with infirmity of fits. Yess, I tell you.
Cataleptic, too, if not also epileptic. I found him in such a state
under a tree in articulo mortem, and he jumped up and walked into a
brook and he was nearly drowned but for me. I pulled him out."

"Because I was not there!" said Kim. "He might have died."

"Yes, he might have died, but he is dry now, and asserts he has
undergone transfiguration." The Babu tapped his forehead knowingly. "I
took notes of his statements for Royal Society- in posse. You must
make haste and be quite well and come back to Simla, and I will tell
you all my tale at Lurgan's. It was splendid. The bottoms of their
trousers were quite torn, and old Nahan Rajah, he thought they were
European soldiers deserting."

"Oh, the Russians? How long were they with thee?"

"One was a Frenchman. Oh, days and days and days! Now all the
hill-people believe all Russians are all beggars. By Jove! they had
not one dam-thing that I did not get them. And I told the common
people- oah, such tales and anecdotes! I will tell you at old Lurgan's
when you come up. We will have- ah- a night out! It is feather in both
our caps! Yess, and they gave me a certificate. That is creaming joke.
You should have seen them at the Alliance Bank identifying themselves!
And thank Almighty God you got their papers so well! You do not
laugh verree much, but you shall laugh when you are well. Now I will
go straight to the railway and get out. You shall have all sorts of
credits for your game. When do you come along? We are very proud of
you, though you gave us great frights. And especially Mahbub."

"Ay, Mahbub. And where is he?"

"Selling horses in this vi-cinity, of course."

"Here! Why? Speak slowly. There is a thickness in my head still."

The Babu looked shyly down his nose. "Well, you see, I am fearful
man, and I do not like responsibility. You were sick, you see, and I
did not know where deuce-an'-all the papers were, and if so, how many.
So when I had come down here I slipped in private wire to Mahbub- he
was at Meerut for races- and I tell him how case stands. He comes up
with his men and he consorts with the lama, and then he calls me a
fool, and is very rude- "

"But wherefore- wherefore?"

"That is what I ask. I only suggest that if anyone steals the papers
I should like some good strong, brave men to rob them back again.
You see they are vitally important, and Mahbub Ali he did not know
where you were."

"Mahbub Ali to rob the Sahiba's house? Thou art mad, Babu," said Kim
with indignation.

"I wanted the papers. Suppose she had stole them? It was only
practical suggestion, I think. You are not pleased, eh?"

A native proverb- unquotable- showed the blackness of Kim's
disapproval.

"Well"- Hurree shrugged his shoulders- "there is no accounting for
thee taste. Mahbub was angry too. He has sold horses all about here,
and he says old lady is pukka (thorough) old lady and would not
condescend to such ungentlemanly things. I do not care. I have got the
papers, and I was very glad of moral support from Mahbub. I tell you I
am fearful man, but, somehow or other, the more fearful I am the
more dam-tight places I get into. So I was glad you came with me to
Chini, and I am glad Mahbub was close by. The old lady she is
sometimes very rude to me and my beautiful pills."

"Allah be merciful," said Kim on his elbow, rejoicing. "What a beast
of wonder is a Babu! And that man walked alone- if he did walk- with
robbed and angry foreigners!"

"Oah, thatt was nothing, after they had done beating me; but if I
lost the papers it was pretty jolly serious. Mahbub he nearly beat
me too, and he went and consorted with the lama no end. I shall
stick to ethnological investigations henceforwards. Now good-bye,
Mister O'Hara. I can catch 4.25 p.m. to Umballa if I am quick. It will
be good times when we all tell thee tale up at Mister Lurgan's. I
shall report you offeecially better. Good-bye, my dear fallow, and
when next you are under thee emotions please do not use the Mohammedan
terms with the Tibetan dress."

He shook hands twice- a Babu to his boot-heels- and opened the door.
With the fall of the sunlight upon his still triumphant face he
returned to the humble Dacca quack.

"He robbed them," thought Kim, forgetting his own share in the game.
"He tricked them. He lied to them like a Bengali. They give him a chit
(a testimonial). He makes them a mock at the risk of his life- I never
would have gone down to them after the pistol-shots- and then he
says he is a fearful man.... And he is a fearful man. I must get
into the world again."

At first his legs bent like bad pipe-stems, and the flood and rush
of the sunlit air dazzled him. He squatted by the white wall, the mind
rummaging among the incidents of the long dooli journey, the lama's
weaknesses, and, now that the stimulus of talk was removed, his own
self-pity, of which, like the sick, he had great store. The unnerved
brain edged away from all the outside, as a raw horse, once
rowelled, sidles from the spur. It was enough, amply enough, that
the spoil of the kilta was away- off his hands- out of his possession.
He tried to think of the lama- to wonder why he had tumbled into a
brook- but the bigness of the world, seen between the forecourt gates,
swept linked thought aside. Then he looked upon the trees and the
broad fields, with the thatched huts hidden among crops- looked with
strange eyes unable to take up the size and proportion and use of
things- stared for a still half-hour. All that while he felt, though
he could not put it into words, that his soul was out of gear with its
surroundings- a cog-wheel unconnected with any machinery, just like
the idle cog-wheel of a cheap Beheea sugar-crusher laid by in a
corner. The breezes fanned over him, the parrots shrieked at him,
the noises of the populated house behind- squabbles, orders, and
reproofs- hit on dead ears.

"I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?" His soul repeated it again
and again.

He did not want to cry- had never felt less like crying in his life-
but of a sudden easy, stupid tears trickled down his nose, and with an
almost audible click he felt the wheels of his being lock up anew on
the world without. Things that rode meaningless on the eyeball an
instant before slid into proper proportion. Roads were meant to be
walked upon, houses to be lived in, cattle to be driven, fields to
be tilled, and men and women to be talked to. They were all real and
true- solidly planted upon the feet- perfectly comprehensible- clay of
his clay, neither more nor less. He shook himself like a dog with a
flea in his ear, and rambled out of the gate. Said the Sahiba, to whom
watchful eyes reported this move: "Let him go. I have done my share.
Mother Earth must do the rest. When the Holy One comes back from
meditation, tell him."

There stood an empty bullock-cart on a little knoll half a mile
away, with a young banian tree behind- a look-out, as it were, above
some new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew
heavy as he neared it. The ground was good clean dust- no new
herbage that, living, is halfway to death already, but the hopeful
dust that holds the seed of all life. He felt it between his toes,
patted it with his palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously,
laid him down full length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned
cart. And Mother Earth was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed
through him to restore the poise he had lost lying so long on a cot
cut off from her good currents. His head lay powerless upon her
breast, and his opened hands surrendered to her strength. The
many-rooted tree above him, and even the dead man-handled wood beside,
knew what he sought, as he himself did not know. Hour upon hour he lay
deeper than sleep.

Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the
horizons smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking
cautiously, for the house had told them where he had gone."

"Allah! What a fool's trick to play in open country," muttered the
horse-dealer. "He could be shot a hundred times- but this is not the
Border."

"And," said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, "never was
such a chela. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a
merry heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful,
courteous. Great is his reward!"

"I know the boy- as I have said."

"And he was all those things?"

"Some of them- but I have not yet found a Red Hat's charm for making
him overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed."

"The Sahiba is a heart of gold," said the lama earnestly. "She looks
upon him as her son."

"Hmph! Half Hind seems that-way disposed. I only wished to see
that the boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou
knowest, he and I were old friends in the first days of your
pilgrimage together."

"That is a bond between us." The lama sat down. "We are at the end
of the pilgrimage."

"No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week
back. I heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the
cot." Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly-dyed beard.

"I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the hakim
from Dacca broke my meditations."

"Otherwise!"- this was in Pashtu for decency's sake- "thou wouldst
have ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell- being an
unbeliever and an idolater for all thy child's simplicity. But now,
Red Hat, what is to be done?"

"This very night"- the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph-
"this very night he will be as free as I am from all taint of sin-
assured as I am when he quits this body of Freedom from the Wheel of
Things. I have a sign," he laid his hand above the torn chart in his
bosom, "that my time is short; but I shall have safe-guarded him
throughout the years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told
thee only three nights back."

"It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin's
wife, that I am a sufi (a freethinker); for here I sit," said Mahbub
to himself, "drinking in blasphemy unthinkable... I remember the tale.
On that, then, he goes to Jannatu l'Adn (the Gardens of Eden). But
how? Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful river from
which the Babu dragged thee?"

"I was dragged from no river," said the lama simply. "Thou hast
forgotten what befell. I found it by knowledge."

"Oh, aye. True," stammered Mahbub, divided between high
indignation and enormous mirth. "I had forgotten the exact run of what
happened. Thou didst find it knowingly."

"And to say that I would take life is- not a sin, but a madness
simple. My chela aided me to the River. It is his right to be cleansed
from sin- with me."

"Ay, he needs cleansing. But afterwards, old man- afterwards?"

"What matter under all the heavens? He is sure of Nibban-
enlightened- as I am."

"Well said. I had a fear he might mount Mohammed's Horse and fly
away."

"Nay- he must go forth as a teacher."

"Aha! Now I see! That is the right gait for the colt. Certainly he
must go forth as a teacher. He is somewhat urgently needed as a scribe
by the State, for instance."

"To that end he was prepared. I acquired merit in that I gave alms
for his sake. A good deed does not die. He aided me in my Search. I
aided him in his. Just is the Wheel, O horse-seller from the North.
Let him be a teacher; let him be a scribe- what matter? He will have
attained Freedom at the end. The rest is illusion."

"What matter? When I must have him with me beyond Balkh in six
months! I come up with ten lame horses and three strong-backed men-
thanks to that chicken of a Babu- to break a sick boy by force out
of an old trot's house. It seems that I stand by while a young Sahib
is hoisted into Allah knows what of an idolater's heaven by means of
old Red Hat. And I am reckoned something of a player of the Game
myself! But the madman is fond of the boy; and I must be very
reasonably mad too."

"What is the prayer?" said the lama, as the rough Pashtu rumbled
into the red beard.

"No matter at all; but now I understand that the boy, sure of
Paradise, can yet enter Government service, my mind is easier. I
must get to my horses. It grows dark. Do not wake him. I have no
wish to hear him call thee master."

"But he is my disciple. What else?"

"He has told me." Mahbub choked down his touch of spleen and rose
laughing. "I am not altogether of thy faith, Red Hat- if so small a
matter concern thee."

"It is nothing," said the lama.

"I thought not. Therefore it will not move thee sinless,
new-washed and three parts drowned to boot, when I call thee a good
man- a very good man. We have talked together some four or five
evenings now, and for all I am a horse-coper I can still, as the
saying is, see holiness beyond the legs of a horse. Yea, can see, too,
how our Friend of all the World put his hand in thine at the first.
Use him well, and suffer him to return to the world as a teacher, when
thou hast- bathed his legs, if that be the proper medicine for the
colt."

"Why not follow the Way thyself, and so accompany the boy?"

Mahbub stared stupefied at the magnificent insolence of the
demand, which across the Border he would have paid with more than a
blow. Then the humour of it touched his worldly soul.

"Softly- softly- one foot at a time, as the lame gelding went over
the Umballa jumps. I may come to Paradise later- I have workings
that way- great motions- and I owe them to thy simplicity. Thou hast
never lied?"

"What need?"

"O Allah, hear him! 'What need' in this Thy world! Nor ever harmed a
man?"

"Once- with a pencase- before I was wise."

"So? I think the better of thee. Thy teachings are good. Thou hast
turned one man that I know from the path of strife." He laughed
immensely. "He came here open-minded to commit a dacoity (a
house-robbery with violence). Yes, to cut, rob, kill, and carry off
what he desired."

"A great foolishness!"

"Oh! black shame too. So he thought after he had seen thee- and a
few others, male and female. So he abandoned it; and now he goes to
beat a big fat Babu man."

"I do not understand."

"Allah forbid it! Some men are strong in knowledge, Red Hat. Thy
strength is stronger still. Keep it- I think thou wilt. If the boy
be not a good servant, pull his ears off."

With a hitch of his broad Bokhariot belt the Pathan swaggered off
into the gloaming, and the lama came down from his clouds so far as to
look at the broad back.

"That person lacks courtesy, and is deceived by the shadow of
appearances. But he spoke well of my chela, who now enters upon his
reward. Let me make the prayer!... Wake, O fortunate above all born of
women. Wake! It is found!"

Kim came up from those deep wells, and the lama attended his yawning
pleasure; duly snapping fingers to head off evil spirits.

"I have slept a hundred years. Where- ? Holy One, hast thou been
here long? I went out to look for thee, but"- he laughed drowsily-
"I slept by the way. I am all well now. Hast thou eaten? Let us go
to the house. It is many days since I tended thee. And the Sahiba
fed thee well? Who shampooed thy legs? What of the weaknesses- the
belly and the neck, and the beating in the ears?"

"Gone- all gone. Dost thou not know?"

"I know nothing, but that I have not seen thee in a monkey's age.
Know what?"

"Strange the knowledge did not reach out to thee, when all my
thoughts were theeward."

"I cannot see the face, but the voice is like a gong. Has the Sahiba
made a young man of thee by her cookery?"

He peered at the cross-legged figure, outlined jet-black against the
lemon-coloured drift of light. So does the stone Bodhisat sit who
looks down upon the patent self-registering turnstiles of the Lahore
Museum.

The lama held his peace. Except for the click of the rosary and a
faint "clop-clop" of Mahbub's retreating feet, the soft, smoky silence
of evening in India wrapped them close.

"Hear me! I bring news."

"But let us- "

Out shot the long yellow hand compelling silence. Kim tucked his
feet under his robe-edge obediently.

"Hear me! I bring news! The Search is finished. Comes now the
Reward.... Thus. When we were among the Hills, I lived on thy strength
till the young branch bowed and nigh broke. When we came out of the
Hills, I was troubled for thee and for other matters which I held in
my heart. The boat of my soul lacked direction; I could not see into
the Cause of Things. So I gave thee over to the virtuous woman
altogether. I took no food. I drank no water. Still I saw not the Way.
They pressed food upon me and cried at my shut door. So I removed
myself to a hollow under a tree. I took no food. I took no water. I
sat in meditation two days and two nights, abstracting my mind;
inbreathing and outbreathing in the required manner.... Upon the
second night- so great was my reward- the wise Soul loosed itself from
the silly Body and went free. This I have never before attained,
though I have stood on the threshold of it. Consider, for it is a
marvel!"

"A marvel indeed. Two days and two nights without food! Where was
the Sahiba?" said Kim under his breath.

"Yea, my Soul went free, and, wheeling like an eagle, saw indeed
that there was no Teshoo Lama nor any other soul. As a drop draws to
water, so my soul drew near to the Great Soul which is beyond all
things. At that point, exalted in contemplation, I saw all Hind,
from Ceylon in the sea to the Hills, and my own Painted Rocks at
Suchzen; I saw every camp and village, to the least, where we have
ever rested. I saw them at one time and in one place; for they were
within the Soul. By this I knew the Soul had passed beyond the
illusion of Time and Space and of Things. By this I knew that I was
free. I saw thee lying in thy cot, and I saw thee falling down hill
under the idolater- at one time, in one place, in my Soul, which, as I
say, had touched the Great Soul. Also I saw the stupid body of
Teshoo Lama lying down, and the hakim from Dacca kneeled beside,
shouting in its ear. Then my Soul was all alone, and I saw nothing,
for I was all things, having reached the Great Soul. And I meditated a
thousand thousand years, passionless, well aware of the Causes of
all Things. Then a voice cried: 'What shall come to the boy if thou
art dead?' and I was shaken back and forth in myself with pity for
thee; and I said: 'I will return to my chela, lest he miss the Way.'
Upon this my Soul, which is the soul of Teshoo Lama, withdrew itself
from the Great Soul with strivings and yearnings and retchings and
agonies not to be told. As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the
water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air;
so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the soul of
Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul. Then a voice cried: 'The River!
Take heed to the River!' and I looked down upon all the world, which
was as I had seen it before- one in time, one in place- and I saw
plainly the River of the Arrow at my feet. At that hour my Soul was
hampered by some evil or other whereof I was not wholly cleansed,
and it lay upon my arms and coiled round my waist; but I put it aside,
and I cast forth as an eagle in my flight for the very place of the
River. I pushed aside world upon world for thy sake. I saw the River
below me- the River of the Arrow- and, descending, the waters of it
closed over me; and behold I was again in the body of Teshoo Lama, but
free from sin, and the hakim from Dacca bore up my head in the
waters of the River. It is here! It is behind the mango-tope here-
even here!"

"Allah Karim! Oh, well that the Babu was by! Wast thou very wet?"

"Why should I regard? I remember the hakim was concerned for the
body of Teshoo Lama. He haled it out of the holy water in his hands,
and there came afterwards thy horse-seller from the North with a cot
and men, and they put the body on the cot and bore it up to the
Sahiba's house."

"What said the Sahiba?"

"I was meditating in that body, and did not hear. So thus the Search
is ended. For the merit that I have acquired, the River of the Arrow
is here. It broke forth at our feet, as I have said. I have found
it. Son of my Soul, I have wrenched my Soul back from the Threshold of
Freedom to free thee from all sin- as I am free, and sinless. Just
is the Wheel! Certain is our deliverance. Come!"

He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won
Salvation for himself and his beloved.



                            -The End-