Kim hurried to his carriage:  elated, bewildered, but a little nettled in that he had no key to the secrets about him.

’I am only a beginner at the Game, that is sure.  I could not have leaped into safety as did the Saddhu.  He knew it was darkest under the lamp.  I could not have thought to tell news under pretence of cursing ... and how clever was the Sahib!  No matter, I saved the life of one ...  Where is the Kamboh gone, Holy One?’ he whispered, as he took his seat in the now crowded compartment.

‘A fear gripped him,’ the lama replied, with a touch of tender malice.  ’He saw thee change the Mahratta to a Saddhu in the twinkling of an eye, as a protection against evil.  That shook him.  Then he saw the Saddhu fall sheer into the hands of the polis — all the effect of thy art.  Then he gathered up his son and fled; for he said that thou didst change a quiet trader into an impudent bandier of words with the Sahibs, and he feared a like fate.  Where is the Saddhu?’

‘With the polis,’ said Kim ...  ‘Yet I saved the Kamboh’s child.’

The lama snuffed blandly.

’Ah, chela, see how thou art overtaken!  Thou didst cure the Kamboh’s child solely to acquire merit.  But thou didst put a spell on the Mahratta with prideful workings — I watched thee — and with sidelong glances to bewilder an old old man and a foolish farmer:  whence calamity and suspicion.’

Kim controlled himself with an effort beyond his years.  Not more than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he saw himself in a cleft stick.  The train rolled out of Delhi into the night.

‘It is true,’ he murmured.  ’Where I have offended thee I have done wrong.’

’It is more, chela.  Thou hast loosed an Act upon the world, and as a stone thrown into a pool so spread the consequences thou canst not tell how far.’

This ignorance was well both for Kim’s vanity and for the lama’s peace of mind, when we think that there was then being handed in at Simla a code-wire reporting the arrival of E23 at Delhi, and, more important, the whereabouts of a letter he had been commissioned to — abstract.  Incidentally, an over-zealous policeman had arrested, on charge of murder done in a far southern State, a horribly indignant Ajmir cotton-broker, who was explaining himself to a Mr Strickland on Delhi platform, while E23 was paddling through byways into the locked heart of Delhi city.  In two hours several telegrams had reached the angry minister of a southern State reporting that all trace of a somewhat bruised Mahratta had been lost; and by the time the leisurely train halted at Saharunpore the last ripple of the stone Kim had helped to heave was lapping against the steps of a mosque in far-away Roum — where it disturbed a pious man at prayers.

The lama made his in ample form near the dewy bougainvillea-trellis near the platform, cheered by the clear sunshine and the presence of his disciple.  ‘We will put these things behind us,’ he said, indicating the brazen engine and the gleaming track.  ’The jolting of the te-rain — though a wonderful thing — has turned my bones to water.  We will use clean air henceforward.’