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'Yes - yes - a thousand times! A straight back and a close-clinging
knee once more; a quick wrist and a keen eye; and the marrow that
makes a man. Oh, the old days - the good days of my strength!'

'That strength is weakness.'

'It has turned so; but fifty years since I could have proved it
otherwise,' the old soldier retorted, driving his stirrup-edge into
the pony's lean flank.

'But I know a River of great healing.'

'I have drank Gunga-water to the edge of dropsy. All she gave me
was a flux, and no sort of strength.'

'It is not Gunga. The River that I know washes from all taint of
sin. Ascending the far bank one is assured of Freedom. I do not
know thy life, but thy face is the face of the honourable and
courteous. Thou hast clung to thy Way, rendering fidelity when it
was hard to give, in that Black Year of which I now remember
other tales. Enter now upon the Middle Way which is the path to
Freedom. Hear the Most Excellent Law, and do not follow dreams.'

'Speak, then, old man,' the soldier smiled, half saluting. 'We be
all babblers at our age.'

The lama squatted under the shade of a mango, whose shadow played
checkerwise over his face; the soldier sat stiffly on the pony;
and Kim, making sure that there were no snakes, lay down in the
crotch of the twisted roots.

There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing
of doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields.
Slowly and impressively the lama began. At the end of ten minutes
the old soldier slid from his pony, to hear better as he said,
and sat with the reins round his wrist. The lama's voice faltered,
the periods lengthened. Kim was busy watching a grey squirrel.
When the little scolding bunch of fur, close pressed to the
branch, disappeared, preacher and audience were fast asleep, the
old officer's strong-cut head pillowed on his arm, the lama's
thrown back against the tree-bole, where it showed like yellow
ivory. A naked child toddled up, stared, and, moved by some quick
impulse of reverence, made a solemn little obeisance before the
lama - only the child was so short and fat that it toppled over
sideways, and Kim laughed at the sprawling, chubby legs. The
child, scared and indignant, yelled aloud.

'Hai! Hai!' said the soldier, leaping to his feet. 'What is it?
What orders? ... It is ... a child! I dreamed it was an alarm.
Little one - little one - do not cry. Have I slept? That was
discourteous indeed!'

'I fear! I am afraid!' roared the child.

'What is it to fear? Two old men and a boy? How wilt thou ever make
a soldier, Princeling?'

The lama had waked too, but, taking no direct notice of the child,
clicked his rosary.

'What is that?' said the child, stopping a yell midway. 'I have
never seen such things. Give them me.'

'Aha.' said the lama, smiling, and trailing a loop of it on the
grass:

This is a handful of cardamoms,
This is a lump of ghi:
This is millet and chillies and rice,

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