'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