The priest looked at him sideways, something bitterly — a dry and blighting smile.

’Is there no priest, then, in the village?  I thought I had seen a great one even now,’ cried Kim.

‘Ay — but -’ the woman began.

’But thou and thy husband hoped to get the cow cured for a handful of thanks.’  The shot told:  they were notoriously the closest-fisted couple in the village.  ’It is not well to cheat the temples.  Give a young calf to thine own priest, and, unless thy Gods are angry past recall, she will give milk within a month.’

‘A master-beggar art thou,’ purred the priest approvingly.  ’Not the cunning of forty years could have done better.  Surely thou hast made the old man rich?’

‘A little flour, a little butter and a mouthful of cardamoms,’ Kim retorted, flushed with the praise, but still cautious — ’Does one grow rich on that?  And, as thou canst see, he is mad.  But it serves me while I learn the road at least.”

He knew what the fakirs of the Taksali Gate were like when they talked among themselves, and copied the very inflection of their lewd disciples.

’Is his Search, then, truth or a cloak to other ends?  It may be treasure.’

‘He is mad — many times mad.  There is nothing else.’

Here the old soldier bobbled up and asked if Kim would accept his hospitality for the night.  The priest recommended him to do so, but insisted that the honour of entertaining the lama belonged to the temple — at which the lama smiled guilelessly.  Kim glanced from one face to the other, and drew his own conclusions.

‘Where is the money?’ he whispered, beckoning the old man off into the darkness.

‘In my bosom.  Where else?’

‘Give it me.  Quietly and swiftly give it me.’

‘But why?  Here is no ticket to buy.’

’Am I thy chela, or am I not?  Do I not safeguard thy old feet about the ways?  Give me the money and at dawn I will return it.’  He slipped his hand above the lama’s girdle and brought away the purse.

‘Be it so — be it so.’  The old man nodded his head.  ’This is a great and terrible world.  I never knew there were so many men alive in it.’

Next morning the priest was in a very bad temper, but the lama was quite happy; and Kim had enjoyed a most interesting evening with the old man, who brought out his cavalry sabre and, balancing it on his dry knees, told tales of the Mutiny and young captains thirty years in their graves, till Kim dropped off to sleep.

‘Certainly the air of this country is good,’ said the lama.  ’I sleep lightly, as do all old men; but last night I slept unwaking till broad day.  Even now I am heavy.’

‘Drink a draught of hot milk,’ said Kim, who had carried not a few such remedies to opium-smokers of his acquaintance.  ’It is time to take the Road again.’

‘The long Road that overpasses all the rivers of Hind,’ said the lama gaily.  ’Let us go.  But how thinkest thou, chela, to recompense these people, and especially the priest, for their great kindness?  Truly they are but parast, but in other lives, maybe, they will receive enlightenment.  A rupee to the temple?  The thing within is no more than stone and red paint, but the heart of man we must acknowledge when and where it is good.’