บทที่ บทที่ 2 · Chapter II

. Chapter II

And whoso will, from Pride released;

Contemning neither creed nor priest,

May feel the Soul of all the East.

About him 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 train.

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 _kos_ 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.