told to me--for a jest belike. But I
will seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy River and
rest from the clatter of the train.'

'It may be that the Bull knows--that he is sent to guide us both.'
said the lama, hopefully as a child. Then to the company, indicating
Kim: 'This one was sent to me but yesterday. He is not, I think, of
this world.'

'Beggars aplenty have I met, and holy men to boot, but never such a
yogi nor such a disciple,' said the woman.

Her husband touched his forehead lightly with one finger and smiled.
But the next time the lama would eat they took care to give him of
their best.

And at last--tired, sleepy, and dusty--they reached Umballa City
Station.

'We abide here upon a law-suit,' said the cultivator's wife to Kim.
'We lodge with my man's cousin's younger brother. There is room also
in the courtyard for thy yogi and for thee. Will--will he give me a
blessing?'

'O holy man! A woman with a heart of gold gives us lodging for the
night. It is a kindly land, this land of the South. See how we have
been helped since the dawn!'

The lama bowed his head in benediction.

'To fill my cousin's younger brother's house with wastrels--' the
husband began, as he shouldered his heavy bamboo staff.

'Thy cousin's younger brother owes my father's cousin something yet on
his daughter's marriage-feast,' said the woman crisply. 'Let him put
their food to that account. The yogi will beg, I doubt not.'

'Ay, I beg for him,' said Kim, anxious only to get the lama under
shelter for the night, that he might seek Mahbub Ali's Englishman and
deliver himself of the white stallion's pedigree.

'Now,' said he, when the lama had come to an anchor in the inner
courtyard of a decent Hindu house behind the cantonments, 'I go away
for a while--to--to buy us victual in the bazar. Do not stray abroad
till I return.'

'Thou wilt return? Thou wilt surely return?' The old man caught at
his wrist. 'And thou wilt return in this very same shape? Is it too
late to look tonight for the River?'

'Too late and too dark. Be comforted. Think how far thou art on the
road--an hundred miles from Lahore already.'

'Yea--and farther from my monastery. Alas! It is a great and terrible
world.'

Kim stole out and away, as unremarkable a figure as ever carried his
own and a few score thousand other folk's fate slung round his neck.
Mahbub Ali's directions left him little doubt of the house in