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look for thy River and rest from the clatter of the train.'

'It may be that the Bull knows - that he is sent to guide us
both.' said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company,
indicating Kim: 'This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is
not, I think, of this world.'

'Beggars aplenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such
a yogi nor such a disciple,' said the woman.

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger
and smiled. But the next time the lama would eat they took care
to give him of their best.

And at last - tired, sleepy, and dusty - they reached Umballa
City Station.

'We abide here upon a law-suit,' said the cultivator's wife to
Kim. 'We lodge with my man's cousin's younger brother. There is
room also in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. Will - will
he give me a blessing?'

'O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for
the night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how
we have been helped since the dawn!'

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

'To fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels -' the
husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

'Thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something
yet on his daughter's marriage-feast,' said the woman crisply.
'Let him put their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I
doubt not.'

'Ay, I beg for him,' said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under
shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali's Englishman
and deliver himself of the white stallion's pedigree.

'Now,' said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner
courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, 'I go
away for a while - to - to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not
stray abroad till I return.'

'Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?' The old man caught
at his wrist. 'And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is
it too late to look tonight for the River?'

'Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on
the road - an hundred miles from Lahore already.'

'Yea - and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and
terrible world.'

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried
his own and a few score thousand other folk's fate slung round
his neck. Mahbub Ali's directions left him little doubt of the
house in which his Englishman lived; and a groom, bringing a dog-
cart home from the Club, made him quite sure. It remained only to
identify his man, and Kim slipped through the garden hedge and
hid in a clump of plumed grass close to the veranda. The house
blazed with lights, and servants moved about tables dressed with
flowers, glass, and silver. Presently forth came an Englishman,
dressed in black and white, humming a tune. It was too dark to
see his face, so Kim, beggar-wise, tried an old experiment.

'Protector of the Poor!'

The man backed towards the voice.

'Mahbub Ali says -'

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