Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/351

Rh I drank the beer and ate the bread of Guru Ch'wan. Next day one said: "We go out to fight Sangor Gutok down the valley to discover (mark again how lust is tied to anger!) which abbot shall bear rule in the valley, and take the profit of the prayers they print at Sangor Gutok." I went, and we fought all day.'

'But how, Holy One?'

'With the long pencases as I could have shown—I say, we fought under the poplars, both abbots and all the monks, and one laid open my forehead to the bone. See!' He tilted back his cap and showed a puckered silvery scar. 'Just and perfect is the Wheel! Yesterday the scar itched, and after fifty years I recalled how it was dealt and the face of him who dealt it, dwelling a little in illusion. Followed that which thou didst see—strife and stupidity. Just is the Wheel! The idolater's blow fell upon the scar. Then I was shaken in my soul: my soul was darkened, and the boat of my soul rocked upon the waters of illusion. Not till I came to Shamlegh could I meditate upon the Cause of Things, or trace the running grass roots of Evil. I have striven all the long night.'

'But Holy One, thou art innocent of all evil. May I be thy sacrifice!'

Kim was genuinely distressed at the old man's sorrow, and Mahbub Ali's phrase slipped out unawares.

'In the dawn,' he went on more gravely, ready rosary clicking between the slow sentences, 'came Enlightenment. It is here. . . I am an old man. . . hill-bred, hill-fed, never to sit down among my hills. Three years I travelled through Hind, but—can earth be stronger than Mother Earth? My stupid body yearned to the hills and the snow of the hills, down below there. I said, and it is true, my Search is sure. So, at the Kulu woman's house