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'Ah! The Wonder House! Can any enter?'

'It is written above the door - all can enter.'

'Without payment?'

'I go in and out. I am no banker,' laughed Kim.

'Alas! I am an old man. I did not know.' Then, fingering his
rosary, he half turned to the Museum.

'What is your caste? Where is your house? Have you come far?' Kim
asked.

'I came by Kulu - from beyond the Kailas - but what know you?
From the Hills where' - he sighed - 'the air and water are fresh
and cool.'

'Aha! Khitai [a Chinaman],' said Abdullah proudly. Fook Shing had
once chased him out of his shop for spitting at the joss above
the boots.

'Pahari [a hillman],' said little Chota Lal.

'Aye, child - a hillman from hills thou'lt never see. Didst hear
of Bhotiyal [Tibet]? I am no Khitai, but a Bhotiya [Tibetan],
since you must know - a lama - or, say, a guru in your tongue.'

'A guru from Tibet,' said Kim. 'I have not seen such a man. They
be Hindus in Tibet, then?'

'We be followers of the Middle Way, living in peace in our
lamasseries, and I go to see the Four Holy Places before I die.
Now do you, who are children, know as much as I do who am old.'
He smiled benignantly on the boys.

'Hast thou eaten?'

He fumbled in his bosom and drew forth a worn, wooden begging-
bowl. The boys nodded. All priests of their acquaintance begged.

'I do not wish to eat yet.' He turned his head like an old
tortoise in the sunlight. 'Is it true that there are many images
in the Wonder House of Lahore?' He repeated the last words as one
making sure of an address.

'That is true,' said Abdullah. 'It is full of heathen busts. Thou
also art an idolater.'

'Never mind him,' said. Kim. 'That is the Government's house and
there is no idolatry in it, but only a Sahib with a white beard.
Come with me and I will show.'

'Strange priests eat boys,' whispered Chota Lal.

'And he is a stranger and a but-parast [idolater],' said
Abdullah, the Mohammedan.

Kim laughed. 'He is new. Run to your mothers' laps, and be safe.
Come!'

Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man
followed and halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger
figures of the Greco-Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how
long since, by forgotten workmen whose hands were feeling, and
not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted Grecian touch.
There were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief,
fragments of statues and slabs crowded with figures that had
encrusted the brick walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of
the North Country and now, dug up and labelled, made the pride of
the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama turned to this and
that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large alto-
relief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord
Buddha. The Master was represented seated on a lotus the petals
of which were so deeply undercut as to show almost detached.
Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders, and old-time

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