On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama — but they called him a bonze — sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty.  The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had suggested a halt till it came up to them.

‘Ha!’ said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots.  ’That is eminent local holy man.  Probably subject of my royal master.’

‘What is he doing?  It is very curious.’

‘He is expounding holy picture — all hand-worked.’

The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low across the gold-coloured grass.  The sullen coolies, glad of the check, halted and slid down their loads.

‘Look!’ said the Frenchman.  ’It is like a picture for the birth of a religion — the first teacher and the first disciple.  Is he a Buddhist?’

‘Of some debased kind,’ the other answered.  ’There are no true Buddhists among the Hills.  But look at the folds of the drapery.  Look at his eyes — how insolent!  Why does this make one feel that we are so young a people?’ The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed.  ’We have nowhere left our mark yet.  Nowhere!  That, do you understand, is what disquiets me.’  He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental calm of the pose.

’Have patience.  We shall make your mark together — we and you young people.  Meantime, draw his picture.’

The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim.

’Holy One, these be Sahibs.  My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go into Simla to oversee his recovery.  They wish to see thy picture -’

‘To heal the sick is always good.  This is the Wheel of Life,’ said the lama, ’the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the rain fell.’

‘And to hear thee expound it.’

The lama’s eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners.  ’To expound the Most Excellent Way is good.  Have they any knowledge of Hindi, such as had the Keeper of Images?’

‘A little, maybe.’

Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor of Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine.  The strangers leaned on their alpenstocks and listened.  Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long shadows.  They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier’s library “The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico” was its name.  Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and very unlike the ‘highly unscrupulous folk’ of Hurree Babu’s imagining.  The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy proprietorship.