Kim

road.

'Was there ever such a disciple as I?' he cried merrily to the lama.

'All earth would have picked thy bones within ten mile of Lahore city

if I had not guarded thee.'

'I consider in my own mind whether thou art a spirit, sometimes, or

sometimes an evil imp,' said the lama, smiling slowly.

'I am thy chela.' Kim dropped into step at his side--that

indescribable gait of the long-distance tramp all the world over.

'Now let us walk,' muttered the lama, and to the click of his rosary

they walked in silence mile upon mile. The lama as usual, was deep in

meditation, but Kim's bright eyes were open wide. This broad, smiling

river of life, he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and

crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new sights at every

stride--castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his

experience.

They met a troop of long-haired, strong-scented Sansis with baskets of

lizards and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing

at their heels. These people kept their own side of the road', moving

at a quick, furtive jog-trot, and all other castes gave them ample

room; for the Sansi is deep pollution. Behind them, walking wide and

stiffly across the strong shadows, the memory of his leg-irons still on

him, strode one newly released from the jail; his full stomach and

shiny skin to prove that the Government fed its prisoners better than

most honest men could feed themselves. Kim knew that walk well, and

made broad jest of it as they passed. Then an Akali, a wild-eyed,

wild-haired Sikh devotee in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with

polished-steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban,

stalked past, returning from a visit to one of the independent Sikh

States, where he had been singing the ancient glories of the Khalsa to

College-trained princelings in top-boots and white-cord breeches. Kim

was careful not to irritate that man; for the Akali's temper is short

and his arm quick. Here and there they met or were overtaken by the

gaily dressed crowds of whole villages turning out to some local fair;

the women, with their babes on their hips, walking behind the men, the

older boys prancing on sticks of sugar-cane, dragging rude brass models

of locomotives such as they sell for a halfpenny, or flashing the sun

into the eyes of their betters from cheap toy mirrors. One could see

at a glance what each had bought; and if there were any doubt it needed

only to watch the wives comparing, brown arm against brown arm, the

newly purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the North-West.

These merry-makers stepped slowly, calling one to the other and

stopping to haggle with sweetmeat-sellers, or to make a prayer before

one of the wayside shrines--sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mussalman--which

the low-caste of both creeds share with beautiful impartiality. A

solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar

in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust and trot past to a

chorus of quick cackling. That was a gang of changars--the women who

have taken all the embankments of all the Northern railways under their

charge--a flat-footed, big-bosomed, strong-limbed, blue-petticoated

clan of earth-carriers, hurrying north on news of a job, and wasting no

time by the road. They belong to the caste whose men do not count, and

they walked with squared elbows, swinging hips, and heads on high, as

suits women who carry heavy weights. A little later a marriage

procession would strike into the Grand Trunk with music and shoutings,

and a smell of marigold and jasmine stronger even than the reek of the

dust. One could see the bride's litter, a blur of red and tinsel,

staggering through the haze, while the bridegroom's bewreathed pony

turned aside to snatch a mouthful from a passing fodder-cart. Then Kim

would join the Kentish-fire of good wishes and bad jokes, wishing the

couple a hundred sons and no daughters, as the saying is. Still more

interesting and more to be shouted over it was when a strolling juggler

with some half-trained monkeys, or a panting, feeble bear, or a woman

who tied goats' horns to her feet, and with these danced on a

slack-rope, set the horses to shying and the women to shrill,

long-drawn quavers of amazement.

The lama never raised his eyes. He did not note the money-lender on

his goose-rumped pony, hastening along to collect the cruel interest;

or the long-shouting, deep-voiced little mob--still in military

formation--of native soldiers on leave, rejoicing to be rid of their

breeches and puttees, and saying the most outrageous things to the most

respectable women in sight. Even the seller of Ganges-water he did not

see, and Kim expected that he would at least buy a bottle of that

precious stuff. He looked steadily at the ground, and strode as

steadily hour after hour, his soul busied elsewhere. But Kim was in

the seventh heaven of joy. The Grand Trunk at this point was built on

an embankment to guard against winter floods from the foothills, so

that one walked, as it were, a little above the country, along a

stately corridor, seeing all India spread out to left and right. It

was beautiful to behold the many-yoked grain and cotton wagons crawling

over the country roads: one could hear their axles, complaining a mile

away, coming nearer, till with shouts and yells and bad words they

climbed up the steep incline and plunged on to the hard main road,

carter reviling carter. It was equally beautiful to watch the people,

little clumps of red and blue and pink and white and saffron, turning

aside to go to their own villages, dispersing and growing small by twos

and threes across the level plain. Kim felt these things, though he

could not give tongue to his feelings, and so contented himself with

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