ght of the gigantic Buddha
that sits before the monastery, gazing eternally across the sands and
snows.

When I awoke next morning the priests were gone. So I took up my pack
and pursued my journey alone, and walking slowly came at sunset to the
distant lamasery. At its door an ancient figure, wrapped in a tattered
cloak, was sitting, engaged apparently in contemplation of the skies. It
was our old friend Kou-en. Adjusting his horn spectacles on his nose he
looked at me.

"I was awaiting you, brother of the Monastery called 'the World,'" he
said in a voice, measured, very ineffectually, to conceal his evident
delight. "Have you grown hungry there that you return to this poor
place?"

"Aye, most excellent Kou-en," I answered, "hungry for rest."

"It shall be yours for all the days of this incarnation. But say, where
is the other brother?"

"Dead," I answered.

"And therefore re-born elsewhere or perhaps, dreaming in Devachan for
a while. Well, doubtless we shall meet him later on. Come, eat, and
afterwards tell me your story."

So I ate, and that night I told him all. Kou-en listened with respectful
attention, but the tale, strange as it might seem to most people,
excited no particular wonder in his mind. Indeed, he explained it to me
at such length by aid of some marvellous theory of re-incarnations, that
at last I began to doze.

"At least," I said sleepily, "it would seem that we are all winning
merit on the Everlasting Plane," for I thought that favourite catchword
would please him.

"Yes, brother of the Monastery called the World," Kou-en answered in
a severe voice, "doubtless you are all winning merit, but, if I may
venture to say so, you are winning it very slowly, especially the
woman--or the sorceress--or the mighty evil spirit--whose names I
understand you to tell me are She, Hes, and Ayesha upon earth and in
_Avitchi_, Star-that-hath-Fallen----"

_(Here Mr. Holly's manuscript ends, its outer sheets having been burnt
when he threw it on to the fire at his house in Cumberland.)_

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