Way, because he was their guest, and because he collogued long of nights with the head-priest—as freethinking a metaphysician as ever split one hair into seventy—they murmured assent.
“Remember,”—Kim bent over the child—“this trouble may come again.”
“Not if thou hast the proper spell,” said the father.
“But in a little while we go away.”
“True,” said the lama to all the Jains. “We go now together upon the Search whereof I have often spoken. I waited till my chela was ripe. Behold him! We go North. Never again shall I look upon this place of my rest, O people of good will.”
“But I am not a beggar.” The cultivator rose to his feet, clutching the child.
“Be still. Do not trouble the Holy One,” a priest cried.
“Go,” Kim whispered. “Meet us again under the big railway bridge, and for the sake of all the Gods of our Punjab, bring food—curry, pulse, cakes fried in fat, and sweetmeats. Specially sweetmeats. Be swift!”
The pallor of hunger suited Kim very well as he stood, tall and slim, in his sand-coloured, sweeping robes, one hand on his rosary and the other in the attitude of benediction, faithfully copied from the lama. An English observer might have said that he looked rather like the young saint of a stained-glass window, whereas he was but a growing lad faint with emptiness.
Long and formal were the farewells, thrice ended and thrice renewed. The Seeker—he who had invited the lama to that haven from faraway Tibet, a silver-faced, hairless ascetic—took no part in it, but meditated, as