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 tha