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for the small matter of a river, it seemed to me that I too must
go a-travelling. If it is our fate to find those things we shall
find them - thou, thy River; and I, my Bull, and the Strong
Pillars and some other matters that I forget.'

'It is not pillars but a Wheel from which I would be free,' said
the lama.

'That is all one. Perhaps they will make me a king,' said Kim,
serenely prepared for anything.

'I will teach thee other and better desires upon the road,' the
lama replied in the voice of authority. 'Let us go to Benares.'

'Not by night. Thieves are abroad. Wait till the day.'

'But there is no place to sleep.' The old man was used to the
order of his monastery, and though he slept on the ground, as the
Rule decrees, preferred a decency in these things.

'We shall get good lodging at the Kashmir Serai,' said Kim,
laughing at his perplexity. 'I have a friend there. Come!'

The hot and crowded bazars blazed with light as they made their
way through the press of all the races in Upper India, and the
lama mooned through it like a man in a dream. It was his first
experience of a large manufacturing city, and the crowded tram-
car with its continually squealing brakes frightened him. Half
pushed, half towed, he arrived at the high gate of the Kashmir
Serai: that huge open square over against the railway station,
surrounded with arched cloisters, where the camel and horse
caravans put up on their return from Central Asia. Here were all
manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling
camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water
for the evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling
grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the
surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers; taking on new
grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed
square. The cloisters, reached by three or four masonry steps,
made a haven of refuge around this turbulent sea. Most of them
were rented to traders, as we rent the arches of a viaduct; the
space between pillar and pillar being bricked or boarded off into
rooms, which were guarded by heavy wooden doors and cumbrous
native padlocks. Locked doors showed that the owner was away, and
a few rude - sometimes very rude - chalk or paint scratches told
where he had gone. Thus: 'Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan.'
Below, in coarse verse: 'O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on
the coat of a Kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse Lutuf to
live so long?'

Kim, fending the lama between excited men and excited beasts,
sidled along the cloisters to the far end, nearest therailway
station, where Mahbub Ali, the horse-trader, lived when he came
in from that mysterious land beyond the Passes of the North.

Kim had had many dealings with Mahbub in his little life,
especially between his tenth and his thirteenth year - and the
big burly Afghan, his beard dyed scarlet with lime (for he was
elderly and did not wish his grey hairs to show), knew the boy's

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