Kim considered for a while, tingling with pride. Three years ago he would have made prompt profit on the situation and gone his way without a thought; but now, the very respect the Jat paid him proved that he was a man. Moreover, he had tasted fever once or twice already, and knew enough to recognize starvation when he saw it. “Call him forth and I will give him a bond on my best yoke, so that the child is cured.” Kim halted at the carved outer door of the temple. A white-clad Oswal banker from Ajmir, his sins of usury new wiped out, asked him what he did. “I am _chela_ to Teshoo Lama, an Holy One from Bhotiyal—within there. He bade me come. I wait. Tell him.” “Do not forget the child,” cried the importunate Jat over his shoulder, and then bellowed in Punjabi; “O Holy One—O disciple of the Holy One—O Gods above all the Worlds—behold affliction sitting at the gate!” That cry is so common in Benares that the passers never turned their heads. The Oswal, at peace with mankind, carried the message into the darkness behind him, and the easy, uncounted Eastern minutes slid by; for the lama was asleep in his cell, and no priest would wake him. When the click of his rosary again broke the hush of the inner court where the calm images of the Arhats stand, a novice whispered, “Thy _chela_ is here,” and the old man strode forth, forgetting the end of that prayer. Hardly had the tall figure shown in the doorway than the Jat ran before him, and, lifting up the child, cried: “Look upon this, Holy One; and if the Gods will, he lives—he lives!” He fumbled in his waist-belt and drew out a small silver coin. “What is now?” The lama’s eyes turned to Kim. It was noticeable he spoke far clearer Urdu than long ago, under ZamZammah; but father would allow no private talk. “It is no more than a fever,” said Kim. “The child is not well fed.” “He sickens at everything, and his mother is not here.” “If it be permitted, I may cure, Holy One.” “What! Have they made thee a healer? Wait here,” said the lama, and he sat down by the Jat upon the lowest step of the temple, while Kim, looking out of the corner of his eyes, slowly opened the little betel-box. He had dreamed dreams at school of returning to the lama as a Sahib—of chaffing the old man before he revealed himself—boy’s dreams all. There was more drama in this abstracted, brow-puckered search through the tabloid-bottles, with a pause here and there for thought and a muttered invocation between whiles. Quinine he had in tablets, and dark brown meat-lozenges—beef most probably, but that was not _his_ business. The little thing would not eat, but it sucked at a lozenge greedily, and said it liked the salt taste.