’The Road and our Search.  I was but waiting for thee.  It was made plain to me in a hundred dreams — notably one that came upon the night of the day that the Gates of Learning first shut that without thee I should never find my River.  Again and again, as thou knowest, I put this from me, fearing an illusion.  Therefore I would not take thee with me that day at Lucknow, when we ate the cakes.  I would not take thee till the. time was ripe and auspicious.  From the Hills to the Sea, from the Sea to the Hills have I gone, but it was vain.  Then I remembered the Tataka.’

He told Kim the story of the elephant with the leg-iron, as he had told it so often to the Jam priests.

‘Further testimony is not needed,’ he ended serenely.  ’Thou wast sent for an aid.  That aid removed, my Search came to naught.  Therefore we will go out again together, and our Search sure.’

‘Whither go we?’

’What matters, Friend of all the World?  The Search, I say, is sure.  If need be, the River will break from the ground before us.  I acquired merit when I sent thee to the Gates of Learning, and gave thee the jewel that is Wisdom.  Thou didst return, I saw even now, a follower of Sakyamuni, the Physician, whose altars are many in Bhotiyal.  It is sufficient.  We are together, and all things are as they were — Friend of all the World — Friend of the Stars — my chela!’

Then they talked of matters secular; but it was noticeable that the lama never demanded any details of life at St Xavier’s, nor showed the faintest curiosity as to the manners and customs of Sahibs.  His mind moved all in the past, and he revived every step of their wonderful first journey together, rubbing his hands and chuckling, till it pleased him to curl himself up into the sudden sleep of old age.

Kim watched the last dusty sunshine fade out of the court, and played with his ghost-dagger and rosary.  The clamour of Benares, oldest of all earth’s cities awake before the Gods, day and night, beat round the walls as the sea’s roar round a breakwater.  Now and again, a Jain priest crossed the court, with some small offering to the images, and swept the path about him lest by chance he should take the life of a living thing.  A lamp twinkled, and there followed the sound of a prayer.  Kim watched the stars as they rose one after another in the still, sticky dark, till he fell asleep at the foot of the altar.  That night he dreamed in Hindustani, with never an English word...

‘Holy One, there is the child to whom we gave the medicine,’ he said, about three o’clock in the morning, when the lama, also waking from dreams, would have fared forth on pilgrimage.  ’The Jat will be here at the light.’

‘I am well answered.  In my haste I would have done a wrong.’  He sat down on the cushions and returned to his rosary.  ’Surely old folk are as children,’ he said pathetically.  ’They desire a matter — behold, it must be done at once, or they fret and weep!  Many times when I was upon the Road I have been ready to stamp with my feet at the hindrance of an ox-cart in the way, or a mere cloud of dust.  It was not so when I was a man — a long time ago.  None the less it is wrongful -’