thousand blows. Not till I had repeated the Blessings” (he meant the Buddhist Beatitudes) “did I achieve calm. But the evil planted in me by that moment’s carelessness works out to its end. Just is the Wheel, swerving not a hair! Learn the lesson, chela .”
“It is too high for me,” Kim muttered. “I am still all shaken. I am glad I hurt the man.”
“I felt that, sleeping upon thy knees, in the wood below. It disquieted me in my dreams—the evil in thy soul working through to mine. Yet on the other hand”—he loosed his rosary—“I have acquired merit by saving two lives—the lives of those that wronged me. Now I must see into the Cause of Things. The boat of my soul staggers.”
“Sleep, and be strong. That is wisest.”
“I meditate. There is a need greater than thou knowest.”
Till the dawn, hour after hour, as the moonlight paled on the high peaks, and that which had been belted blackness on the sides of the