mple or chapel, which was
evidently also their communal council-room and place of deliberation. We
entered, trembling. We had no great certainty that we would ever get out
of it alive again.

The temple was a large, oblong hall, with a great figure of Buddha,
cross-legged, imperturbable, enthroned in a niche at its further end,
like the apse or recess in a church in Italy. Before it stood an altar.
The Buddha sat and smiled on us with his eternal smile. A complacent
deity, carved out of white stone, and gaudily painted; a yellow robe,
like the Lamas', dangled across his shoulders. The air seemed close with
incense and also with bad ventilation. The centre of the nave, if I may
so call it, was occupied by a huge wooden cylinder, a sort of overgrown
drum, painted in bright colours, with ornamental designs and Tibetan
letters. It was much taller than a man, some nine feet high, I should
say, and it revolved above and below on an iron spindle. Looking closer,
I saw it had a crank attached to it, with a string tied to the crank. A
solitary monk, absorbed in his devotions, was pulling this string as we
entered, and making the cylinder revolve with a jerk as he pulled it. At
each revolution, a bell above rang once. The monk seemed as if his whole
soul was bound up in the huge revolving drum and the bell worked by it.

We took this all in at a glance, somewhat vaguely at first, for our
lives were at stake, and we were scarcely in a mood for ethnological
observations. But the moment Hilda saw the cylinder her eye lighted up.
I could see at once an idea had struck her. "This is a praying-wheel!"
she cried, in quite a delighted voice. "I know where I am now,
Hubert--Lady Meadowcroft--I see a way out of this! Do exactly as you see
me do, and all may yet go well. Don't show surprise at anything. I think
we can work upon these people's religious feelings."

Without a moment's hesitation she prostrated herself thrice on the
ground before the figure of Buddha, knocking her head ostentatiously in
the dust as she did so. We followed suit instantly. Then Hilda rose and
began walking slowly round the big drum in the nave, saying aloud at
each step, in a sort of monotonous chant, like a priest intoning, the
four mystic words, "Aum, mani, padme, hum," "Aum, mani, padme, hum,"
many times over. We repeated the sacred formula after her, as if we had
always been brought up to it. I noticed that Hilda walked the way of
the sun. It is an importa