of it.
His thin black hair was brushed across the top of his bald head, and the
distended, apprehensive expression on his face did not change.

He made me sit down by the fire and asked me about the family
in America. But there was, I thought, no real interest in this
interrogation until he came to a reflective comment.

"I should like to go to America," he said; "there must be great wastes
of country where one would be out of the world."

The sincerity of this expression stood out in the trivial talk. It
indicated something that disturbed the man. He was as isolated as he
could get in England, but that was not enough.

He sat for a moment silent, the fingers of his nervous hand moving on
his knee. When he glanced up, with a sudden jerk of his head, he
caught me looking at the little image of Buddha in its glass box on the
mantelpiece.

Was this longing for solitude the influence of this mysterious religion?

Remote, lonely isolation was a cult of Buddha. The devotees of that cult
sought the waste places of the earth for their meditations. To be out
of the world, in its physical contact, was a prime postulate in the
practice of this creed.

"Ah, Robin," he cried, as though he were in a jovial mood and careless
of the subject, "do you have a hobby?"

I answered that I had not felt the need of one. The inquiry was a
surprise and I could think of nothing better to reply with.

"Then, my boy," he went on, "what will you do when you are old? One must
have something to occupy the mind."

He got up and turned the glass box a little on the mantelpiece.

"This is a very rare image," he said; "one does not find this image
anywhere in India. It came from Tibet. The expression and the pose of
the figure differ from the conventional Buddha. You might not see that,
but to any one familiar with this religion these differences are
marked. This is a monastery image, and you will see that it is cast, not
graven."

He beckoned me to come closer, and I rose and stood beside him. He went
on as with a lecture:

"The reason given by the natives why this image is not found in Southern
Asia is that it cannot be cast anywhere but in the Tibetan monasteries.
A certain ritual at the time of casting is necessary to produce a
perfect figure. This ritual is a secret of the Khan monasteries.
Castings of this form of image made without the ritual are always
defective; so I was told in India."

He moved the glass box a little closer to