with clamouring coolies--panic-stricken,
and in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked
the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill.

'Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,'
said he.

'It is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand
over his brow.

'For that very reason,' was the reply.

'If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye
acquire merit by obedience.'

'Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,' the man insisted.

For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a
breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and laid
a finger on the man's shoulder.

'Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing--I who was Abbot of
Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake
under the eaves--a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy
wish to--'

The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a
Tibetan devil-gong.

'Ai! ai!' cried the Spiti men. 'Do not curse us--do not curse him.
It was but his zeal, Holy One! ... Put down the rifle, fool!'

'Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the
priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the
Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times--in torment.'
His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim's shoulder.

'I have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead hush
under the pines. 'I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in
Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He
struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...' He slid to the
ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart
bump and check.

'Have they hurt him to the death?' said the Ao-chung man, while the
others stood mute.

Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'Nay,' he cried passionately,
'this is only a weakness.' Then he remembered that he was a white man,
with a white man's camp-fittings at his service. 'Open the kiltas! The
Sahibs may have a medicine.'

'Oho! Then I know it,' said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. 'Not for
five years was I Yankling Sahib's shikarri without knowing that
medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!'

He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky--such as is sold to
explorers at Leh--and cleverly forced a little between the l