’They had marked our dead.  They paid a great payment after we of the Sikhs had schooled them.  So it was.  Is this Amritzar?’

‘Ay, and here they cut our tickets,’ said the banker, fumbling at his belt.

The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came round.  Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places.  Kim produced his and was told to get out.

‘But I go to Umballa,’ he protested.  ‘I go with this holy man.’

‘Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care.  This ticket is only -’

Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama’s declining years, and that the lama would die without his care.  All the carriage bade the guard be merciful — the banker was specially eloquent here — but the guard hauled Kim on to the platform.  The lama blinked — he could not overtake the situation and Kim lifted up his voice and wept outside the carriage window.

’I am very poor.  My father is dead — my mother is dead.  O charitable ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?’

‘What — what is this?’ the lama repeated.  ’He must go to Benares.  He must come with me.  He is my chela.  If there is money to be paid -’

‘Oh, be silent,’ whispered Kim; ’are we Rajahs to throw away good silver when the world is so charitable?’

The Amritzar girl stepped out with her bundles, and it was on her that Kim kept his watchful eye.  Ladies of that persuasion, he knew, were generous.

‘A ticket — a little tikkut to Umballa — O Breaker of Hearts!’ She laughed.  ‘Hast thou no charity?’

‘Does the holy man come from the North?’

‘From far and far in the North he comes,’ cried Kim.  ’From among the hills.’

’There is snow among the pine-trees in the North — in the hills there is snow.  My mother was from Kulu.  Get thee a ticket.  Ask him for a blessing.’

‘Ten thousand blessings,’ shrilled Kim.  ’O Holy One, a woman has given us in charity so that I can come with thee — a woman with a golden heart.  I run for the tikkut.’

The girl looked up at the lama, who had mechanically followed Kim to the platform.  He bowed his head that he might not see her, and muttered in Tibetan as she passed on with the crowd.

‘Light come — light go,’ said the cultivator’s wife viciously.

‘She has acquired merit,’ returned the lama.  ’Beyond doubt it was a nun.’

’There be ten thousand such nuns in Amritzar alone.  Return, old man, or the te-rain may depart without thee,’ cried the banker.

’Not only was it sufficient for the ticket, but for a little food also,’ said Kim, leaping to his place.  ’Now eat, Holy One.  Look.  Day comes!’

Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away across the flat green levels.  All the rich Punjab lay out in the splendour of the keen sun.  The lama flinched a little as the telegraph-posts swung by.