So, when with scufflings and scrapings and a hot air of importance, paddled up nothing less than the Sahiba’s pet palanquin sent twenty miles, with that same grizzled old Oorya servant in charge, and when they reached the disorderly order of the long white rambling house behind Saharunpore, the lama took his own measures.

Said the Sahiba cheerily from an upper window, after compliments: ‘What is the good of an old woman’s advice to an old man? I told thee — I told thee, Holy One, to keep an eye upon the chela. How didst thou do it? Never answer me! I know. He has been running among the women. Look at his eyes — hollow and sunk — and the Betraying Line from the nose down! He has been sifted out! Fie! Fie! And a priest, too!’

Kim looked up, over-weary to smile, shaking his head in denial.

‘Do not jest,’ said the lama. ‘That time is done. We are here upon great matters. A sickness of soul took me in the Hills, and him a sickness of the body. Since then I have lived upon his strength — eating him.’

‘Children together — young and old,’ she sniffed, but forbore to make any new jokes. ‘May this present hospitality restore ye! Hold awhile and I will come to gossip of the high good Hills.’

At evening time — her son-in-law was returned, so she did not need to go on inspection round the farm — she won to the meat of the matter, explained low-voicedly by the lama. The two old heads nodded wisely together. Kim had reeled to a room with a cot in it, and was dozing soddenly. The lama had forbidden him to set blankets or get food.

‘I know — I know. Who but I?’ she cackled. ‘We who go down to the burning-ghats clutch at the hands of those coming up from the River of Life with full water-jars — yes, brimming water-jars. I did the boy wrong. He lent thee his strength? It is true that the old eat the young daily. Stands now we must restore him.’

‘Thou hast many times acquired merit —’

‘My merit. What is it? Old bag of bones making curries for men who do not ask “Who cooked this?” Now if it were stored up for my grandson —’

‘He that had the belly-pain?’

‘To think the Holy One remembers that! I must tell his mother. It is most singular honour! “He that had the belly-pain” — straightway the Holy One remembered. She will be proud.’

‘My chela is to me as is a son to the unenlightened.’

‘Say grandson, rather. Mothers have not the wisdom of our years. If a child cries they say the heavens are falling. Now a grandmother is far enough separated from the pain of bearing and the pleasure of giving the breast to consider whether a cry is wickedness pure or the wind. And since thou speakest once again of wind, when last the Holy One was here, maybe I offended in pressing for charms.’

‘Sister,’ said the lama, using that form of address a Buddhist monk may sometimes employ towards a nun, ‘if charms comfort thee —’

‘They are better than ten thousand doctors.’

‘I say, if they comfort thee, I who was Abbot of Such-zen, will make as many as thou mayest desire. I have never seen thy face —’

‘That even the monkeys who steal our loquats count for a gain. Hee! hee!’