s
all I can remember. He was about four or five years old, and I made
his acquaintance the day we arrived at the temple. It was at the end of
September. We had left Mukden in order to take part in what they said
was going to be a great battle. I don't know what the village was called
at which we arrived on the second day of our march. I can only remember
that it was a beautiful and deliciously quiet spot, and that we
established ourselves in a temple; that is to say not actually in the
temple itself, but in the house of the priest. He was a Buddhist who
looked after the deities of the place, which were made of carved and
painted wood, and lived in a small pagoda. The building consisted of
three quadrangles surrounded by a high stone wall. The first of these
quadrangles, which you entered from the road, reminded me of the yard
in front of any farm. There was a good deal of straw lying about, some
broken ploughshares, buckets, wooden bowls, spades, and other implements
of toil. A few hens hurried about searching for grains here and there; a
dog was sleeping in the sun. At the further end of the yard a yellow cat
seemed to have set aside a space for its exclusive use. This farmyard
was separated from the next quadrangle by the house of the priest, which
occupied the whole of the second enclosure; that is to say the living
rooms extended right round the quadrangle, leaving a square and open
space in the centre. The part of the house which separated the second
quadrangle from the next consisted solely of a roof supported by
pillars, making an open verandah, through which from the second
enclosure you saw into the third. The third enclosure was a garden,
consisting of a square grass plot and some cypress trees. At the further
end of the garden was the temple itself.

We arrived in the afternoon. We were met by an elderly man, the priest,
who put the place at our disposal and established us in the rooms
situated in the second quadrangle to the east and west. He himself and
his family lived in the part of the house which lay between the farmyard
and the second enclosure. The Cossacks of the battery with which I was
living encamped in a field on the other side of the farmyard, but the
treasure chest was placed in the farmyard itself, and a sentry stood
near it with a drawn sword.

The owner of the house had two sons. One of them, aged about thirteen,
had something to do with the temple services, and wore a kind of tunic
made o