Chapter: And whoso will, from Pride released;
  Contemning neither creed nor priest,
  May feel the Soul of all the East.
  About him at Kamakura.

  Buddha at Kamakura.


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

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

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

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

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

'Take thou the purse.'

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

'It is the train--only the te-rain.  It will not come here. Wait!'
Amazed at the lama's immense simplicity (he had handed him a small bag
full of rupees), Kim asked and paid for a ticket to Umballa.  A sleepy
clerk grunted and flung out a ticket to the next station, just six
miles distant.

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

The Babu scowled and dealt the proper ticket.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Even to Benares.'

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


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

'That may be well.  We of the Ludhiana Sikhs'--he rolled it out
sonorously--'do not trouble our heads with doctrine.  We fight.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care.  This ticket is only--'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Does the holy man come from the North?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone.  Return, old man,
or the te-rain may depart without thee,' cried the banker.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What others?'

'What other than Gunga?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'It irks me,' he said at last.  'The speed and the clatter irk me.
Moreover, my chela, I think that maybe we have over-passed that River.'

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

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

'I do not know.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Protector of the Poor!'

The man backed towards the voice.

'Mahbub Ali says--'

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man still read intently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Yes, sir, and Macklin too.'

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

'What about artillery, sir?'

'I must consult Macklin.'

'Then it means war?'

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

'But C25 may have lied.'

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

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

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

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

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

'Small wonder.  The guest of honour is none other than the Jang-i-Lat
Sahib [the Commander-in-Chief].'

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

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

He returned to find the cultivator's cousin's younger brother
discussing the family law-suit in all its bearings with the cultivator
and his wife and a few friends, while the lama dozed. After the evening
meal some one passed him a water-pipe; and Kim felt very much of a man
as he pulled at the smooth coconut-shell, his legs spread abroad in the
moonlight, his tongue clicking in remarks from time to time.  His hosts
were most polite; for the cultivator's wife had told them of his vision
of the Red Bull, and of his probable descent from another world.
Moreover, the lama was a great and venerable curiosity.


The family priest, an old, tolerant Sarsut Brahmin, dropped in later,
and naturally started a theological argument to impress the family.  By
creed, of course, they were all on their priest's side, but the lama
was the guest and the novelty.  His gentle kindliness, and his
impressive Chinese quotations, that sounded like spells, delighted them
hugely; and in this sympathetic, simple air, he expanded like the
Bodhisat's own lotus, speaking of his life in the great hills of
Such-zen, before, as he said, 'I rose up to seek enlightenment.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Of what year?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Pity it is that these and such as these could not be freed from--'

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

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

 At the train station, a babu tries to cheat Kim when he goes to buy tickets for himself and the lama. Kim is too smart for the guy though, and insists on tickets that go all the way to Umballa. He also buys a ticket to Amritzar , which is another big city in the Punjab. The lama has never traveled by train before, and he is frightened of all the noise. Kim and the lama board a crowded train car filled with a diverse group of people: a Sikh craftsman, a wealthy Hindu Jat farmer and his wife, an Amritsar courtesan , a Hindu banker, and a Dogra soldier. They all start chatting more or less nicely . The train stops at Amritzar so that the ticket collector can take everybody's tickets. Remember how we said that Kim bought two tickets, one to Umballa and one to Amritzar ? Now we find out why. He gives the Umballa ticket to the lama and keeps the ticket for Amritzar for himself. At Amritzar, the ticket collector tries to boot Kim off the train for not having the full fare to Umballa. Kim kicks up a huge fuss about being an orphan who can't leave the poor lama alone with no one to take care of him. The lama tries to pay Kim's fare, but Kim shushes him: he's working a con here. The Amritzar girl feels so sorry for Kim that she gives him money for the train ticket and for some extra food. Kim and the lama continue on the train to Umballa. The lama gets into a conversation about gods with his fellow passengers, and none of them recognize his Buddhist beliefs; in fact, they all think he's crazy. The lama seems to be confused by the train, and he worries that they are traveling too fast over the rivers that could be his River of the Arrow. The farmer's wife is pretty skeptical of all of the lama's talk, but she still offers them a place to stay for the night in Umballa. Kim slips away to deliver Mahbub Ali's message to the Englishman. He is pretty sure this is all secret business, so he hides in a nearby hedge and throws Mahbub Ali's message at the Englishman's feet; the Englishman drops a coin on the ground to pay Kim for his troubles. Kim quietly follows the Englishman and watches him reading Mahbub Ali's message. The Englishman shares the message with a tall, older man with black hair, who agrees that Mahbub Ali's message is the last straw--they have to send troops north to settle things. Kim goes to the kitchens to find out who is eating at the house that night. Creighton Sahib and the Commander-in-Chief--the guest of honor--are both dining there. So Kim gets excited: He thought Mahbub Ali was probably tangled up with some woman, but it turns out that Mahbub Ali's message is big, serious news to do with real fighting. Back at the farmer's house in Umballa, the farmer's wife has invited her family's Hindu priest over. This priest is impressed with the lama's holy manner, even if they don't share beliefs. They all talk over Kim's prophecy that he will find his fortune when he meets a Red Bull in a green field, and two men will arrive first to make way for his arrival. The Hindu priest checks out Kim's horoscope and makes a prediction: in three days, the prophecy's two men will come to clear the way for the Bull. But hanging over the Bull, there is a star sign of war. So war is in Kim's near future. The lama goes into a nearby field to look at a small river to see if it is his River.

