he monastery, and if we were able to find any, on game,
which we might trap or shoot in the scrub-like forest of stunted pines
and junipers that grew around its border. But he would listen to no such
thing. We had been sent to be their guests, he said, and their guests
we should remain for so long as might be convenient to us. Would we lay
upon them the burden of the sin of inhospitality? Besides, he remarked
with his chuckle--"We who dwell alone like to hear about that other
great monastery called the World, where the monks are not so favoured as
we who are set in this blessed situation, and where folk even go hungry
in body, and," he added, "in soul."

Indeed, as we soon found out, the dear old man's object was to keep our
feet in the Path until we reached the goal of Truth, or, in other words,
became excellent Lamas like himself and his flock.

So we walked in the Path, as we had done in many another Lamasery,
and assisted at the long prayers in the ruined temple and studied the
_Kandjur_, or "Translation of the Words" of Buddha, which is their bible
and a very long one, and generally showed that our "minds were open."
Also we expounded to them the doctrines of our own faith, and greatly
delighted were they to find so many points of similarity between it and
theirs. Indeed, I am not certain but that if we could have stopped there
long enough, say ten years, we might have persuaded some of them to
accept a new revelation of which we were the prophets. Further, in spare
hours we told them many tales of "the Monastery called the World," and
it was really delightful, and in a sense piteous, to see the joy with
which they listened to these stories of wondrous countries and new races
of men; they who knew only of Russia and China and some semi-savage
tribes, inhabitants of the mountains and the deserts.

"It is right for us to learn all this," they declared, "for, who knows,
perhaps in future incarnations we may become inhabitants of these
places."

But though the time passed thus in comfort and indeed, compared to many
of our experiences, in luxury, oh! our hearts were hungry, for in them
burned the consuming fire of our quest. We felt that we were on the
threshold--yes, we knew it, we knew it, and yet our wretched physical
limitations made it impossible for us to advance by a single step. On
the desert beneath fell the snow, moreover great winds arose suddenly
that drove those snows like dust, piling them in heaps as