ith
buying peeled sugar-cane and spitting the pith generously about his
path. From time to time the lama took snuff, and at last Kim could
endure the silence no longer.

'This is a good land--the land of the South!' said he. 'The air is
good; the water is good. Eh?'

'And they are all bound upon the Wheel,' said the lama. 'Bound from
life after life. To none of these has the Way been shown.' He shook
himself back to this world.

'And now we have walked a weary way,' said Kim. 'Surely we shall soon
come to a parao [a resting-place]. Shall we stay there? Look, the sun
is sloping.'

'Who will receive us this evening?'

'That is all one. This country is full of good folk. Besides' he sunk
his voice beneath a whisper--'we have money.'

The crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked the
end of their day's journey. A line of stalls selling very simple food
and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police-station, a well, a
horse-trough, a few trees, and, under them, some trampled ground dotted
with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a parao on the
Grand Trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows--both hungry.

By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower
branches of the mango-trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home
in their hundreds; the chattering, grey-backed Seven Sisters, talking
over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes
almost under the feet of the travellers; and shufflings and scufflings
in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the
night-picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for
an instant the faces and the cartwheels and the bullocks' horns as red
as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing
a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the
country, and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke
and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. The
evening patrol hurried out of the police-station with important
coughings and reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of
a wayside carter's hookah glowed red while Kim's eye mechanically
watched the last flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers.

The life of the parao was very like that of the Kashmir Serai on a
small scale. Kim dived into the happy Asiatic disorder which, if you
only allow time, will bring you everything that a si