s blue and
white, of yellow pansies and mauve and white irises, of large white
roses and small yellow ones, of giant yellow primulas with six tiers of
flowers, when the oaks and the chestnuts are clothed in young green, and
the apricot, pear and orange trees are in bloom, when large and lovely
blossoms cover that little-known tree that the Bhutanese call _chape_,
when the bright green of the young grass runs up to the white
snowfields. The woods are full of a pretty ground orchid, beautiful
trailing blossoms of others droop from the boughs of the great trees,
and on the magnesium limestone hills one of the rarest orchids grows in
profusion.

But to the two pilgrims of Love the land seemed beautiful even now that
the winter was not far distant. In the silent woods, hidden from prying
eyes, they sat hand in hand and whispered to each other over and over
again the oldest, sweetest story that the Earth has known. Strange to
hear words of love from the lips of such a weird-looking couple; yet
Muriel in her quaint disguise with her silky hair cropped to the scalp
was as beautiful in her lover's eyes as when he had seen her in her
prettiest frocks. And she thought the yellow-skinned, wrinkled old lama
infinitely more attractive than the gay young subaltern of Ranga
Duar--for he was her own now. Such is Love's glamour. Muriel had
forgiven royally.

Bhutan is a Buddhist-ruled land, therefore slaying for sport and fishing
in the rivers is prohibited; nay, more, the Maharajah sometimes forbids
the killing of even domestic animals for food. So wild life abounds. The
fugitives often saw flocks of burhel--called _nao_ in Bhutan--feeding on
the precipitous slopes of the higher hills. Once Frank and Muriel
excitedly watched a snow-leopard stalking one of these big-horned sheep
sixteen thousand feet above the sea-level. And in these heights they
even saw an occasional lynx or wolf, generally only to be found in the
highest elevations bordering on Tibet. Silver-haired _langur_ apes, the
white fringes around their black faces giving them a comic resemblance
to aged negroes, awoke the echoes of the mountains with their deep
booming cry; while in the lower valleys little brown monkeys mopped and
mowed from the trees at the fugitives as they passed. On one occasion
Muriel, exhilarated by the keen, life-giving air, ran gaily on ahead of
the others in a wood--and came on a tiger enjoying its midday siesta.
But the striped brute only uttered