`Clean - to return again to the Gods,' the lama muttered. `And to go forth on the round of lives anew - still tied to the Wheel.' He shook his head testily. `But maybe there is a mistake. Who, then, made Gunga in the beginning?'

`The Gods. Of what known faith art thou?' the banker said, appalled.

`I follow the Law - the Most Excellent Law. So it was the Gods that made Gunga. What like of Gods were they?'

The carriage looked at him in amazement. It was inconceivable that anyone should be ignorant of Gunga.

`What - what is thy God?' said the money-lender at last.

`Hear!' said the lama, shifting the rosary to his hand. `Hear: for I speak of Him now! O people of Hind, listen!'

He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers, and visionaries: as it has been from the beginning and will continue to the end.

`Um!' said the soldier of the Ludhiana Sikhs. `There was a Mohammedan regiment lay next to us at the Pirzai Kotal, and a priest of theirs - he was, as I remember, a naik - when the fit was on him, spake prophecies. But the mad all are in God's keeping. His officers overlooked much in that man.'

The lama fell back on Urdu, remembering that he was in a strange land. `Hear the tale of the Arrow which our Lord loosed from the bow,' he said.

This was much more to their taste, and they listened curiously while he told it. `Now, O people of Hind, I go to seek that River. Know ye aught that may guide me, for we be all men and women in evil case.'

`There is Gunga - and Gunga alone - who washes away sin,' ran the murmur round the carriage.

`Though past question we have good Gods Jullundur-way,' said the cultivator's wife, looking out of the window. `See how they have blessed the crops.'

`To search every river in the Punjab is no small matter,' said her husband. `For me, a stream that leaves good silt on my land suffices, and I thank Bhumia, the God of the Home-stead.' He shrugged one knotted, bronzed shoulder.

`Think you our Lord came so far North?' said the lama, turning to Kim.

`It may be,' Kim replied soothingly, as he spat red pan-juice on the floor.

`The last of the Great Ones,' said the Sikh with authority, `was Sikander Julkarn [Alexander the Great]. He paved the streets of Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds to this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God.'

`Let thy hair grow long and talk Punjabi,' said the young soldier jestingly to Kim, quoting a Northern proverb. `That is all that makes a Sikh.' But he did not say this very loud.

The lama sighed and shrank into himself, a dingy, shapeless mass. In the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning - `Om mane pudme hum! Om mane pudme hum!' - and the thick click of the wooden rosary beads.