‘Holy One, hast thou ever taken the Road alone?’ Kim looked up sharply, like the Indian crows so busy about the fields.

’Surely, child:  from Kulu to Pathankot — from Kulu, where my first chela died.  When men were kind to us we made offerings, and all men were well-disposed throughout all the Hills.’

‘It is otherwise in Hind,’ said Kim drily.  ’Their Gods are many-armed and malignant.  Let them alone.’

’I would set thee on thy road for a little, Friend of all the World, thou and thy yellow man.’  The old soldier ambled up the village street, all shadowy in the dawn, on a punt, scissor-hocked pony.  ’Last night broke up the fountains of remembrance in my so-dried heart, and it was as a blessing to me.  Truly there is war abroad in the air.  I smell it.  See!  I have brought my sword.’

He sat long-legged on the little beast, with the big sword at his side — hand dropped on the pommel — staring fiercely over the flat lands towards the North.  ’Tell me again how He showed in thy vision.  Come up and sit behind me.  The beast will carry two.’

‘I am this Holy One’s disciple,’ said Kim, as they cleared the village-gate.  The villagers seemed almost sorry to be rid of them, but the priest’s farewell was cold and distant.  He had wasted some opium on a man who carried no money.

’That is well spoken.  I am not much used to holy men, but respect is always good.  There is no respect in these days — not even when a Commissioner Sahib comes to see me.  But why should one whose Star leads him to war follow a holy man?’

‘But he is a holy man,’ said Kim earnestly.  ’In truth, and in talk and in act, holy.  He is not like the others.  I have never seen such an one.  We be not fortune-tellers, or jugglers, or beggars.’

’Thou art not.  That I can see.  But I do not know that other.  He marches well, though.’

The first freshness of the day carried the lama forward with long, easy, camel-like strides.  He was deep in meditation, mechanically clicking his rosary.

They followed the rutted and worn country road that wound across the flat between the great dark-green mango-groves, the line of the snowcapped Himalayas faint to the eastward.  All India was at work in the fields, to the creaking of well-wheels, the shouting of ploughmen behind their cattle, and the clamour of the crows.  Even the pony felt the good influence and almost broke into a trot as Kim laid a hand on the stirrup-leather.

‘It repents me that I did not give a rupee to the shrine,’ said the lama on the last bead of his eighty-one.

The old soldier growled in his beard, so that the lama for the first time was aware of him.

‘Seekest thou the River also?’ said he, turning.

‘The day is new,’ was the reply.  ’What need of a river save to water at before sundown?  I come to show thee a short lane to the Big Road.’