Page:Kim - Rudyard Kipling (1912).djvu/381

Rh 'That is a bond between us.' The lama sat down. 'We are at the end of the pilgrimage.'

'No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back. I heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.' Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly dyed beard.

'I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the hakim from Dacca broke my meditations.'

'Otherwise'—this was in Pashtu for decency's sake—'thou wouldst have ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell—being an unbeliever and an idolater for all thy child's simplicity. But now, Red Hat, what is to be done?'

'This very night,'—the words came slowly, vibrating with triumph,—'this very night he will be as free as I am from all taint of sin assured—as I am when he quits this body of Freedom from the Wheel of Things. I have a sign,' he laid his hand above the torn chart in his bosom, 'that my time is short; but I shall have safe-guarded him throughout the years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee only three nights back.'

'It must be true, as the Tirah priest said when I stole his cousin's wife, that I am a sufi (a free-thinker); for here I sit,' said Mahbub to himself, 'drinking in blasphemy unthinkable. I remember the tale. On that, then, he goes to Jannatu l' Adn (the Gardens of Eden). . . . Wilt thou slay him or drown him in that wonderful River from which the Babu dragged thee?'

'I was dragged from no River,' said the lama simply. 'Thou hast forgotten what befell. I found it by Knowledge.'

'Oh, ay. True,' stammered Mahbub, divided between high indignation and enormous mirth. 'I had forgotten the true run of what happened. Thou didst find it knowingly.'

'And to say that I would take life is—not a sin, but a madness