forehead to the bone. See!” He tilted back his cap and showed a puckered silvery scar. “Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it was dealt and the face of him who dealt it; dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that which thou didst see—strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The idolater’s blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul: my soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of illusion. Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Cause of Things, or trace the running grassroots of Evil. I strove all the long night.”
“But, Holy One, thou art innocent of all evil. May I be thy sacrifice!”
Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man’s sorrow, and Mahbub Ali’s phrase slipped out unawares.
“In the dawn,” the lama went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking between the slow sentences, “came enlightenment. It is here … I am an old man … hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my Hills. Three years I travelled through Hind, but—can earth be stronger than Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the Hills and the snows of