Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/130

108 'He does not know anything,' said Kim. 'I will show you him if you come. He is my master. Then afterwards we can go away.'

'Powers of Darkness!' was all that Father Victor could say, as Bennett marched off, with a firm hand on Kim's shoulder.

They found the lama where he had dropped.

'The search is at an end for me,' shouted Kim in the vernacular. 'I have found the Bull, but God knows what comes next. They will not hurt you. Come to the fat priest's tent with this thin man and see the end. It is all new and they cannot talk Hindi. They are only uncurried donkeys.'

'Then it is not well to make a jest of their ignorance,' the lama returned. 'I am glad if thou art rejoiced, chela.' Dignified and unsuspicious, he strode into the little tent, made his salutation to the amazed Father Victor, and sat down by the open charcoal brazier. The yellow lining of the tent reflected in the lamplight made his face almost orange.

Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of a creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title of 'heathen.'

'And what was the end of the search? What gift has the Red Bull brought?' The lama addressed himself to Kim. 'He says, "What are you going to do?"' Bennett was staring uneasily at Father Victor, and Kim, for his own ends, took upon himself the office of interpreter.

'I cannot see what concern this faquir has with the boy, who is probably his dupe or his confederate,' Bennett began. 'We cannot allow an English boy Assuming that he is the son of a Mason, the sooner he goes to the Masonic Orphanage the better.'

'Ah! That's your opinion as Secretary to the Regimental