price is so much. The small money in return is just so much. I
know the ways of the te-rain ... Never did yogi need chela as thou
dost,' he went on merrily to the bewildered lama. 'They would have
flung thee out at Mian Mir but for me. This way! Come!' He returned
the money, keeping only one anna in each rupee of the price of the
Umballa ticket as his commission--the immemorial commission of Asia.

The lama jibbed at the open door of a crowded third-class carriage.
'Were it not better to walk?' said he weakly.

A burly Sikh artisan thrust forth his bearded head. 'Is he afraid? Do
not be afraid. I remember the time when I was afraid of the te-rain.
Enter! This thing is the work of the Government.'

'I do not fear,' said the lama. 'Have ye room within for two?'

'There is no room even for a mouse,' shrilled the wife of a well-to-do
cultivator--a Hindu Jat from the rich Jullundur, district. Our night
trains are not as well looked after as the day ones, where the sexes
are very strictly kept to separate carriages.

'Oh, mother of my son, we can make space,' said the blueturbaned
husband. 'Pick up the child. It is a holy man, see'st thou?'

'And my lap full of seventy times seven bundles! Why not bid him sit
on my knee, Shameless? But men are ever thus!' She looked round for
approval. An Amritzar courtesan near the window sniffed behind her
head drapery.

'Enter! Enter!' cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded
account-book in a cloth under his arm. With an oily smirk: 'It is
well to be kind to the poor.'

'Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn calf,'
said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all laughed.

'Will it travel to Benares?' said the lama.

'Assuredly. Else why should we come? Enter, or we are left,' cried
Kim.

'See!' shrilled the Amritzar girl. 'He has never entered a train. Oh,
see!'

'Nay, help,' said the cultivator, putting out a large brown hand and
hauling him in. 'Thus is it done, father.'

'But--but--I sit on the floor. It is against the Rule to sit on a
bench,' said the lama. 'Moreover, it cramps me.'

'I say,' began the money-lender, pursing his lips, 'that there is not
one rule of right living which these te-rains do not cause us to break.
We sit, for example, side by side with all castes and peoples.'

'Yea, and with most outrageously shameless ones,' said the wife,
scowling at the Amritzar girl making eyes at the