dren 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