at we left the Himalayas. I shall not see
you again, Mr. Hunter West, and I therefore bid you farewell. Your old
age will be a happy one, as it deserves to be, and your Eastern studies
will have a lasting effect upon the knowledge and literature of your own
country. Farewell!"

"And am I also to see no more of you?" I asked.

"Unless you will walk with me along the sea-shore," he answered. "But
you have already been out this morning, and may be tired. I ask too much
of you."

"Nay, I should be delighted to come," I responded from my heart, and we
set off together, accompanied for some little distance by my father, who
would gladly, I could see, have reopened the Sanscrit controversy, had
not his stock of breath been too limited to allow of his talking and
walking at the same time.

"He is a learned man," Ram Singh remarked, after we had left him behind,
"but, like many another, he is intolerant towards opinions which differ
from his own. He will know better some day."

I made no answer to this observation, and we trudged along for a time in
silence, keeping well down to the water's edge, where the sands afforded
a good foothold.

The sand dunes which lined the coast formed a continuous ridge upon our
left, cutting us off entirely from all human observation, while on the
right the broad Channel stretched away with hardly a sail to break its
silvery uniformity. The Buddhist priest and I were absolutely alone with
Nature.

I could not help reflecting that if he were really the dangerous man
that the mate affected to consider him, or that might be inferred from
the words of General Heatherstone, I had placed myself completely in his
power.

Yet such was the majestic benignity of the man's aspect, and the
unruffled serenity of his deep, dark eyes, that I could afford in his
presence to let fear and suspicion blow past me as lightly as the breeze
which whistled round us. His face might be stern, and even terrible, but
I felt that he could never be unjust.

As I glanced from time to time at his noble profile and the sweep of his
jet-black beard, his rough-spun tweed travelling suit struck me with
an almost painful sense of incongruity, and I re-clothed him in my
imagination with the grand, sweeping Oriental costume which is the
fitting and proper frame for such a picture--the only garb which does
not detract from the dignity and grace of the wearer.

The place to which he led me was a small fisher cottage which ha