“I learned it in Pathânkot—sitting on a doorstep,” said the lama shyly. “It is good to be kind to babes.”
“As I remember, before the sleep came on us, thou hadst told me that marriage and bearing were darkeners of the true light, stumbling-blocks upon the Way. Do children drop from Heaven in thy country? Is it the Way to sing them songs?”
“No man is all perfect,” said the lama gravely, recoiling the rosary. “Run now to thy mother, little one.”
“Hear him!” said the soldier to Kim. “He is ashamed for that he has made a child happy. There was a very good householder lost in thee, my brother. Hai, child!” He threw it a pice. “Sweetmeats are always sweet.” And as the little figure capered away into the sunshine: “They grow up and become men. Holy One, I grieve that I slept in the midst of thy preaching. Forgive me.”
“We be two old men,” said the lama. “The fault is mine. I listened to thy talk of the world and its madness, and one fault led to the next.”
“Hear him! What harm do thy Gods suffer from play with a babe? And that song was very well sung. Let us go on and I will sing thee the song of Nikal Seyn before Delhi—the old song.”
And they fared out from the gloom of the mango tope, the old man’s high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn —the song that men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened with deep interest.
“Ahi! Nikal Seyn is dead—he died before Delhi! Lances of the North, take vengeance for Nikal Seyn.”
He quavered it out to the end, marking the trills with the flat of his sword on the pony’s rump.