a trap; or, having caught thee on a hook in the days when I was
not enlightened, cast thee back into the river.'

'Maybe,' said Kim quietly. He had heard this sort of speculation
again and again, from the mouths of many whom the English would not
consider imaginative. 'Now, as regards that
woman in the bullock-cart. I think she needs a second son for her
daughter.'

'That is no part of the Way,' sighed the lama. 'But at least she is
from the Hills. Ah, the Hills, and the snow of the Hills!'

He rose and stalked to the cart. Kim would have given his ears to
come too, but the lama did not invite him; and the few words he
caught were in an unknown tongue, for they spoke some common speech
of the mountains. The woman seemed to ask questions which the lama
turned over in his mind before answering. Now and again he heard
the singsong cadence of a Chinese quotation. It was a strange
picture that Kim watched between drooped eyelids. The lama, very
straight and erect, the deep folds of his yellow clothing slashed
with black in the light of the parao fires precisely as a knotted
tree-trunk is slashed with the shadows of the low sun, addressed a
tinsel and lacquered ruth which burned like a many-coloured jewel
in the same uncertain light. The patterns on the gold-worked
curtains ran up and down, melting and reforming as the folds shook
and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest
the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between
the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness
speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and
faces and shadows. The voices of early evening had settled down to