`Because,' said Kim stoutly, `he is holy, and thinks upon matters hidden from thee.'

`That may be well. We of the Ludhiana Sikhs' - he rolled it out sonorously - `do not trouble our heads with doctrine. We fight.'

`My sister's brother's son is naik [corporal] in that regiment,' said the Sikh craftsman quietly. `There are also some Dogra companies there.' The soldier glared, for a Dogra is of other caste than a Sikh, and the banker tittered.

`They are all one to me,' said the Amritzar girl.

`That we believe,' snorted the cultivator's wife malignantly.

`Nay, but all who serve the Sirkar with weapons in their hands are, as it were, one brotherhood. There is one brotherhood of the caste, but beyond that again' - she looked round timidly - `the bond of the Pulton - the Regiment - eh?'

`My brother is in a Jat regiment,' said the cultivator. `Dogras be good men.'

`Thy Sikhs at least were of that opinion,' said the soldier, with a scowl at the placid old man in the corner. `Thy Sikhs thought so when our two companies came to help them at the Pirzai Kotal in the face of eight Afridi standards on the ridge not three months gone.'

He told the story of a Border action in which the Dogra companies of the Ludhiana Sikhs had acquitted themselves well. The Amritzar girl smiled; for she knew the tale was to win her approval.

`Alas!' said the cultivator's wife at the end. `So their villages were burnt and their little children made homeless?'

`They had marked our dead. They paid a great payment after we of the Sikhs had schooled them. So it was. Is this Amritzar?'

`Ay, and here they cut our tickets,' said the banker, fumbling at his belt.

The lamps were paling in the dawn when the half-caste guard came round. Ticket-collecting is a slow business in the East, where people secrete their tickets in all sorts of curious places. Kim produced his and was told to get out.

`But I go to Umballa,' he protested. `I go with this holy man.'

`Thou canst go to Jehannum for aught I care. This ticket is only to Amritzar. Out!'

Kim burst into a flood of tears, protesting that the lama was his father and his mother, that he was the prop of the lama's declining years, and that the lama would die without his care. All the carriage bade the guard be merciful - the banker was specially eloquent here - but the guard hauled Kim on to the platform. The lama blinked - he could not overtake the situation - and Kim lifted up his voice and wept outside the carriage window.

`I am very poor. My father is dead - my mother is dead. O charitable ones, if I am left here, who shall tend that old man?'

`What - what is this?' the lama repeated. `He must go to Benares. He must come with me. He is my chela. If there is money to be paid - '

`Oh, be silent,' whispered Kim; `are we Rajahs to throw away good silver when the world is so charitable?'