‘But thou art indeed old, Holy One.’

’The thing was done.  A Cause was put out into the world, and, old or young, sick or sound, knowing or unknowing, who can rein in the effect of that Cause?  Does the Wheel hang still if a child spin it — or a drunkard?  Chela, this is a great and a terrible world.’

‘I think it good,’ Kim yawned.  ’What is there to eat?  I have not eaten since yesterday even.’

’I had forgotten thy need.  Yonder is good Bhotiyal tea and cold rice.’

‘We cannot walk far on such stuff.’  Kim felt all the European’s lust for flesh-meat, which is not accessible in a Jain temple.  Yet, instead of going out at once with the begging-bowl, he stayed his stomach on slabs of cold rice till the full dawn.  It brought the farmer, voluble, stuttering with gratitude.

‘In the night the fever broke and the sweat came,’ he cried.  ’Feel here — his skin is fresh and new!  He esteemed the salt lozenges, and took milk with greed.’  He drew the cloth from the child’s face, and it smiled sleepily at Kim.  A little knot of Jain priests, silent but all-observant, gathered by the temple door.  They knew, and Kim knew that they knew, how the old lama had met his disciple.  Being courteous folk, they had not obtruded themselves overnight by presence, word, or gesture.  Wherefore Kim repaid them as the sun rose.

‘Thank the Gods of the Jains, brother,’ he said, not knowing how those Gods were named.  ‘The fever is indeed broken.’

‘Look!  See!’ The lama beamed in the background upon his hosts of three years.  ’Was there ever such a chela?  He follows our Lord the Healer.’

Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as well as the Lingam and the Snake.  They wear the Brahminical thread; they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law.  But, because they knew and loved the lama, because he was an old man, because he sought the Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of nights with the head-priest — as free-thinking a metaphysician as ever split one hair into seventy — they murmured assent.

‘Remember,’ — Kim bent over the child -. ’this trouble may come again.’

‘Not if thou hast the proper spell,’ said the father.

‘But in a little while we go away.’

‘True,’ said the lama to all the Jains.  ’We go now together upon the Search whereof I have often spoken.  I waited till my chela was ripe.  Behold him!  We go North.  Never again shall I look upon this place of my rest, O people of good will.’

‘But I am not a beggar.’  The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching the child.

‘Be still.  Do not trouble the Holy One,’ a priest cried.

‘Go,’ Kim whispered.  ’Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food — curry, pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats.  Specially sweetmeats.  Be swift!’