‘A blessing on thee.’  The lama inclined his solemn head.  ’I have known many men in my so long life, and disciples not a few.  But to none among men, if so be thou art woman-born, has my heart gone out as it has to thee — thoughtful, wise, and courteous; but something of a small imp.’

‘And I have never seen such a priest as thou.’  Kim considered the benevolent yellow face wrinkle by wrinkle.  ’It is less than three days since we took the road together, and it is as though it were a hundred years.’

’Perhaps in a former life it was permitted that I should have rendered thee some service.  Maybe’ — he smiled — ’I freed thee from a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was not enlightened, cast thee back into the river.’

‘Maybe,’ said Kim quietly.  He had heard this sort of speculation again and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not consider imaginative.  ’Now, as regards that woman in the bullock-cart.  I think she needs a second son for her daughter.’

‘That is no part of the Way,’ sighed the lama.  ’But at least she is from the Hills.  Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!’

He rose and stalked to the cart.  Kim would have given his ears to come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he caught were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech of the mountains.  The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama turned over in his mind before answering.  Now and again he heard the singsong cadence of a Chinese quotation.  It was a strange picture that Kim watched between drooped eyelids.  The lama, very straight and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted tree-trunk is slashed with the shadows of the low sun, addressed a tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-coloured jewel in the same uncertain light.  The patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and reforming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between the embroideries.  Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and faces and shadows.  The voices of early evening had settled down to one soothing hum whose deepest note was the steady chumping of the bullocks above their chopped straw, and whose highest was the tinkle of a Bengali dancing-girl’s sitar.  Most men had eaten and pulled deep at their gurgling, grunting hookahs, which in full blast sound like bull-frogs.

At last the lama returned.  A hillman walked behind him with a wadded cotton-quilt and spread it carefully by the fire.

‘She deserves ten thousand grandchildren,’ thought Kim.  ’None the less, but for me, those gifts would not have come.’

‘A virtuous woman — and a wise one.’  The lama slackened off, joint by joint, like a slow camel.  ’The world is full of charity to those who follow the Way.’  He flung a fair half of the quilt over Kim.