Kim

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 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

tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges--beef most probably, but that was

not his business. The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a

lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.

'Take then these six.' Kim handed them to the man. 'Praise the Gods,

and boil three in milk; other three in water. After he has drunk the

milk give him this' (it was the half of a quinine pill), 'and wrap him

warm. Give him the water of the other three, and the other half of

this white pill when he wakes. Meantime, here is another brown

medicine that he may suck at on the way home.'

'Gods, what wisdom!' said the Kamboh, snatching.

It was as much as Kim could remember of his own treatment in a bout of

autumn malaria--if you except the patter that he added to impress the

lama.

'Now go! Come again in the morning.'

'But the price--the price,' said the Jat, and threw back his sturdy

shoulders. 'My son is my son. Now that he will be whole again, how

shall I go back to his mother and say I took help by the wayside and

did not even give a bowl of curds in return?'

'They are alike, these Jats,' said Kim softly. 'The Jat stood on his

dunghill and the King's elephants went by. "O driver," said he, "what

will you sell those little donkeys for?"'

The Jat burst into a roar of laughter, stifled with apologies to the

lama. 'It is the saying of my own country the very talk of it. So are

we Jats all. I will come tomorrow with the child; and the blessing of

the Gods of the Homesteads--who are good little Gods--be on you both

... Now, son, we grow strong again. Do not spit it out, little

Princeling! King of my Heart, do not spit it out, and we shall be

strong men, wrestlers and club-wielders, by morning.'

He moved away, crooning and mumbling. The lama turned to Kim, and all

the loving old soul of him looked out through his narrow eyes.

'To heal the sick is to acquire merit; but first one gets knowledge.

That was wisely done, O Friend of all the World.'

'I was made wise by thee, Holy One,' said Kim, forgetting the little

play just ended; forgetting St Xavier's; forgetting his white blood;

forgetting even the Great Game as he stooped, Mohammedan-fashion, to

touch his master's feet in the dust of the Jain temple. 'My teaching I

owe to thee. I have eaten thy bread three years. My time is finished.

I am loosed from the schools. I come to thee.'

'Herein is my reward. Enter! Enter! And is all well?' They passed

to the inner court, where the afternoon sun sloped golden across.

'Stand that I may see. So!' He peered critically. 'It is no longer a

child, but a man, ripened in wisdom, walking as a physician. I did

well--I did well when I gave thee up to the armed men on that black

night. Dost thou remember our first day under Zam-Zammah?'

'Ay,' said Kim. 'Dost thou remember when I leapt off the carriage the

first day I went to--'