Chapter: Yea, voice of every Soul that clung
  To life that strove from rung to rung
  When Devadatta's rule was young,
  The warm wind brings Kamakura.

  Buddha at Kamakura.


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

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

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

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

'Ah,' said Kim, sucking in his breath.  'If the next crops fail, thou
canst only blame thine own tongue.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'But thou hast said he was low-caste and discourteous.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Come, thou!'  he called over his shoulder.

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

'Come.  He does no hurt.'

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

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

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

Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes, and
nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to every glimpse
of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping villages at noonday; the
lama replying to the volleyed questions with an unswerving simplicity.
They sought a River:  a River of miraculous healing.  Had any one
knowledge of such a stream?

Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the end
and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a meal.
The women were always kind, and the little children as children are the
world over, alternately shy and venturesome.

Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled,
mud-roofed hamlet, talking to the headman as the cattle came in from
the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day's last meal.  They
had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens round hungry Umballa, and
were among the mile-wide green of the staple crops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'He says thou are a but [a spirit].'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Ay, War,' he answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I have seen Him.'

'To know again?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The old man rose stiffly and saluted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Ay--but--' the woman began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'In my bosom.  Where else?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Thou art not.  That I can see.  But I do not know that other.  He
marches well, though.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'That is a courtesy to be remembered, O man of good will.  But why the
sword?'

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

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

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

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

'What madness was that, then?'

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

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

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

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

'Umph!  I saw Delhi shake at least--and Delhi is the navel of the
world.'

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

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

'The greater merit.'

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

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

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

'And after?'  said the lama.

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

'And at the last what wilt thou do?'

'At the last I shall die.'

'And after?'

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

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

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

'Hast thou never desired any other thing?'

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

'That strength is weakness.'

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

'But I know a River of great healing.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a handful of cardamoms, This is a lump of ghi: This is millet
and chillies and rice, A supper for thee and me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Look!  Brahmins and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias,
pilgrims and potters--all the world going and coming.  It is to me as a
river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.'

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

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

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

'Rissaldar Sahib, all goes well.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'My father!'  He reigned back ten yards and dismounted.

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

 An angry farmer tries to chase Kim and the lama off his property as they go looking for the River of the Arrow in one of his fields. But Kim quickly guilt-trips the farmer into worrying that harassing a holy man like the lama will bring him bad luck, so the farmer apologizes and offers the two of them a meal. As they cross the field, Kim spots a cobra and wants to kill it. The lama says no, "Let him live out his life" and walks about a foot away from the snake as though it's not horribly venomous. Kim finally seems actually impressed by the lama's spiritual nature. Kim and the lama continue walking on foot, stopping at every body of water they pass to check if it's the River. As they travel, they come upon an elderly headman for a village, who likes to entertain people. The headman invites the village priest over so they can have a little party for Kim and the lama, and the elders of the village all gather round to hear Kim's tales of Lahore and his travels with the lama. The lama brings up Kim's Red Bull again. Kim clearly feels puffed up with importance: he tells the men that his star sign prophecies war . In fact, there is an old man at this party who knows all about war--he fought on behalf of the British Indian government during the "Mutiny" of 1857 . When Kim swears that there are eight thousand troops marching from Pindi and Peshawur , the old man wants proof. Kim does a spot-on imitation of the tall man with black hair who gave the orders, and the old man is so impressed with this imitation that he salutes Kim. The next day, the old soldier arrives at the temple where the lama and Kim have spent the night. The old man wants to show them the path that leads to the Grand Trunk Road south to Benares. As they walk, the lama notices that the old man is carrying his sword. So the old man tells of his experiences fighting against his fellow Indian soldiers in the Revolt of 1857. He fought on the side of the English, and received many medals after the Revolt ended for his bravery. The lama tries to interest the old man in his River of the Arrow, which will cleanse the old man of all of his sins. At last, they arrive at the "Big Road" , which is the Grand Trunk Road. This is an ancient highway running east to west across India . On this vast road, they see a man brutally beating his horse. The lama runs over to the horse to pat and soothe it, and a policeman scolds the man driving the cart for beating his horse like that. But the old soldier embraces the horseman: it's his son.

