The lama sighed and shrunk into himself, a dingy shapeless mass. In the pauses of their talk they could hear the low droning—'Om mane pudme hum! Om mane pudme hum!'—and the thick click of the wooden rosary beads.
'It irks me,' he said at last. 'The speed and the clatter irk me. Moreover, my chela, I think that may be we have overpassed that river.'
'Peace, peace,' said Kim. 'Was not the river near Benares? We are yet far from the place.'
'But—if our Lord came north, it may be any one of these little ones that we have run across.'
'I do not know.'
'But thou wast sent to me—wast thou sent to me?—for the merit I had acquired over yonder at Suchzen. From beside the cannon didst thou come—bearing two faces—and two garbs.'
'Peace. One must not speak of these things here,' whispered Kim. 'There was but one of me. Think again and thou wilt remember. A boy—a Hindu boy—by the great green cannon.'
'But was there not also an Englishman with a white beard—holy among images—who himself made more sure my assurance of the River of the Arrow?'
'He—we—went to the Ajaib-Gher in Lahore to pray before the gods there,' Kim explained to the openly listening company. 'And the Sahib of the Wonder House talked to him—yes, this is truth—as a brother. He is a very holy man, from far beyond the hills. Rest thou. In time we come to Umballa.'
'But my river—the river of my healing?'
'And then, if it please thee, we will go hunting for that river on foot. So that we miss nothing—not even a little rivulet in a field side.'
