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I know the ways of the te-rain ... Never did yogi
need chela as thou dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered
lama. 'They would have flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me.
This way! Come!' He returned the money, keeping only one anna in
each rupee of the price of the Umballa ticket as his commission -
the immemorial commission of Asia.

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class
carriage. 'Were it not better to walk?' said he weakly.

A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. 'Is he
afraid? Do not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid
of the te-rain. Enter! This thing is the work of the Government.'

'I do not fear,' said the lama. 'Have ye room within for two?'

'There is no room even for a mouse,' shrilled the wife of a
well-to-do cultivator - a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur, district.
Our night trains are not as well looked after as the day ones,
where the sexes are very strictly kept to separate carriages.

'Oh, mother of my son, we can make space,' said the blueturbaned
husband. 'Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see'st thou?'

'And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him
sit on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!' She looked
round for approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed
behind her head drapery.

'Enter! Enter!' cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded
account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: 'It is
well to be kind to the poor.'

'Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn
calf,' said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they
all laughed.

'Will it travel to Benares?' said the lama.

'Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left,'
cried Kim.

'See!' shrilled the Amritzar girl. 'He has never entered a train.
Oh, see!'

'Nay, help,' said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand
and hauling him in. 'Thus is it done, father.'

'But - but - I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on
a bench,' said the lama. 'Moreover, it cramps me.'

'I say,' began the money-lender, pursing his lips, 'that there is
not one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us
to break. We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and
peoples.'

'Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,' said the wife,
scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the young sepoy.

'I said we might have gone by cart along the road,' said the
husband, 'and thus have saved some money.'

'Yes - and spent twice over what we saved on food by the way.
That was talked out ten thousand times.'

'Ay, by ten thousand tongues,' grunted he.

'The Gods help us poor women if we may not speak. Oho! He is of
that sort which may not look at or reply to a woman.' For the
lama, constrained by his Rule, took not the faintest notice of
her. 'And his disciple is like him?'

'Nay, mother,' said Kim most promptly. 'Not when the woman is

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