have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way without
a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved that he
was a man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and
knew enough to recognize starvation when he saw it.

'Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that the
child is cured.'

Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A white-clad Oswal
banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him what he
did.

'I am chela to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal--within there. He
bade me come. I wait. Tell him.'

'Do not forget the child,' cried the importunate Jat over his shoulder,
and then bellowed in Punjabi; 'O Holy One--O disciple of the Holy
One--O Gods above all the Worlds--behold affliction sitting at the
gate!' That cry is so common in Benares that the passers never turned
their heads.

The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness
behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid by; for the
lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him. When the
click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the
calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered, 'Thy chela is
here,' and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer.

Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran before
him, and, lifting up the child, cried: 'Look upon this, Holy One; and
if the Gods will, he lives--he lives!'

He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin.

'What is now?' The lama's eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he
spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under ZamZammah; but father would
allow no private talk.

'It is no more than a fever,' said Kim. 'The child is not well fed.'

'He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.'

'If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.'

'What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here,' said the lama, and
he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while Kim,
looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little
betel-box. He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as
a Sahib--of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself--boy's
dreams all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered
search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for
thought and a muttered invocation between whiles. Quinine he had in
ta