This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while he told it.  ’Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River.  Know ye aught that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case.’

‘There is Gunga — and Gunga alone — who washes away sin.’ ran the murmur round the carriage.

‘Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way,’ said the cultivator’s wife, looking out of the window.  ’See how they have blessed the crops.’

‘To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter,’ said her husband.  ’For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land suffices, and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Home-stead.’  He shrugged one knotted, bronzed shoulder.

‘Think you our Lord came so far North?’ said the lama, turning to Kim.

‘It may be,’ Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on the floor.

‘The last of the Great Ones,’ said the Sikh with authority, ’was Sikander Julkarn [Alexander the Great].  He paved the streets of Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa.  That pavement holds to this day; and the tank is there also.  I never heard of thy God.’

‘Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,’ said the young soldier jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb.  ’That is all that makes a Sikh.’  But he did not say this very loud.

The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass.  In the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning ’Om mane pudme hum!  Om mane pudme hum!’ — and the thick click of the wooden rosary beads.

‘It irks me,’ he said at last.  ’The speed and the clatter irk me.  Moreover, my chela, I think that maybe we have over-passed that River.’

‘Peace, peace,’ said Kim.  ’Was not the River near Benares?  We are yet far from the place.’

’But — if our Lord came North, it may be any one of these little ones that we have run across.’

‘I do not know.’

’But thou wast sent to me — wast thou sent to me? — for the merit I had acquired over yonder at Such-zen.  From beside the cannon didst thou come — bearing two faces — and two garbs.’

‘Peace.  One must not speak of these things here,’ whispered Kim.  ’There was but one of me.  Think again and thou wilt remember.  A boy — a Hindu boy — by the great green cannon.’

’But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard holy among images — who himself made more sure my assurance of the River of the Arrow?’

’He — we — went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the Gods there,’ Kim explained to the openly listening company.  ’And the Sahib of the Wonder House talked to him — yes, this is truth as a brother.  He is a very holy man, from far beyond the Hills.  Rest, thou.  In time we come to Umballa.’

‘But my River — the River of my healing?’

’And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that River on foot.  So that we miss nothing — not even a little rivulet in a field-side.’