ther do we all travel.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago he
would