rs
of the trains that go south.'

'And for food?' Lamas, as a rule, have good store of money somewhere
about them, but the Curator wished to make sure.

'For the journey, I take up the Master's begging-bowl. Yes. Even as
He went so go I, forsaking the ease of my monastery. There was with me
when I left the hills a chela [disciple] who begged for me as the Rule
demands, but halting in Kulu awhile a fever took him and he died. I
have now no chela, but I will take the alms-bowl and thus enable the
charitable to acquire merit.' He nodded his head valiantly. Learned
doctors of a lamassery do not beg, but the lama was an enthusiast in
this quest.

'Be it so,' said the Curator, smiling. 'Suffer me now to acquire
merit. We be craftsmen together, thou and I. Here is a new book of
white English paper: here be sharpened pencils two and three--thick
and thin, all good for a scribe. Now lend me thy spectacles.'

The Curator looked through them. They were heavily scratched, but the
power was almost exactly that of his own pair, which he slid into the
lama's hand, saying: 'Try these.'

'A feather! A very feather upon the face.' The old man turned his
head delightedly and wrinkled up his nose. 'How scarcely do I feel
them! How clearly do I see!'

'They be bilaur--crystal--and will never scratch. May they help thee
to thy River, for they are thine.'

'I will take them and the pencils and the white note-book,' said the
lama, 'as a sign of friendship between priest and priest--and now--' He
fumbled at his belt, detached the open-work iron pincers, and laid it
on the Curator's table. 'That is for a memory between thee and me--my
pencase. It is something old--even as I am.'

It was a piece of ancient design, Chinese, of an iron that is not
smelted these days; and the collector's heart in the Curator's bosom
had gone out to it from the first. For no persuasion would the lama
resume his gift.

'When I return, having found the River, I will bring thee a written
picture of the Padma Samthora such as I used to make on silk at the
lamassery. Yes--and of the Wheel of Life,' he chuckled, 'for we be
craftsmen together, thou and I.'

The Curator would have detained him: they are few in the world who
still have the secret of the conventional brush-pen Buddhist pictures
which are, as it were, half written and half drawn. But the lama
strode out, head high in air, and pausing an instant before the great
statue of a