on of the spirit?"

I did not answer this argument. I was struggling with myself.

"No sign has come to me," I said, "and yet I have had a part in the
play, humble enough, I admit, and I believe that I have still a part."

"No," he said, "no sign has come to you. I wish that it had. Oh! how I
wish you could be convinced as I am, Horace!"

Then we were silent for a long while, silent, with our eyes fixed upon
the sky.

It was a stormy dawn. Clouds in fantastic masses hung upon the ocean.
One of them was like a great mountain, and we watched it idly. It
changed its shape, the crest of it grew hollow like a crater. From this
crater sprang a projecting cloud, a rough pillar with a knob or lump
resting on its top. Suddenly the rays of the risen sun struck upon this
mountain and the column and they turned white like snow. Then as though
melted by those fiery arrows, the centre of the excrescence above the
pillar thinned out and vanished, leaving an enormous loop of inky cloud.

"Look," said Leo in a low, frightened voice, "that is the shape of the
mountain which I saw in my vision. There upon it is the black loop, and
there through it shines the fire. _It would seem that the sign is for
both of us, Horace._"

I looked and looked again till presently the vast loop vanished into the
blue of heaven. Then I turned and said--"I will come with you to Central
Asia, Leo."

CHAPTER II

THE LAMASERY

Sixteen years had passed since that night vigil in the old Cumberland
house, and, behold! we two, Leo and I, were still travelling, still
searching for that mountain peak shaped like the Symbol of Life which
never, never could be found.

Our adventures would fill volumes, but of what use is it to record them.
Many of a similar nature are already written of in books; those that we
endured were more prolonged, that is all. Five years we spent in Thibet,
for the most part as guests of various monasteries, where we studied the
law and traditions of the Lamas. Here we were once sentenced to death in
punishment for having visited a forbidden city, but escaped through the
kindness of a Chinese official.

Leaving Thibet, we wandered east and west and north, thousands and
thousands of miles, sojourning amongst many tribes in Chinese territory
and elsewhere, learning many tongues, enduring much hardship. Thus we
would hear a legend of a place, say nine hundred miles away, and spend
two years in reaching it, to find when we came th