“I know the boy—as I have said.”
“And he was all those things?”
“Some of them—but I have not yet found a Red Hat’s charm for making him overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed.”
“The Sahiba is a heart of gold,” said the lama earnestly. “She looks upon him as her son.”
“Hmph! Half Hind seems that way disposed. I only wished to see that the boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou knowest, he and I were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.”
“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 Pushtu 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 safeguarded him throughout the years. Remember, I have reached Knowledge, as I told thee only three nights back.”