men who hold the right of way to Lassa, and our position can be imagined?"
Again Cass Ledyard lapsed into silence. Stark Laurier made no effort to interrupt his revery.
"I fear I am beginning to ramble," he continued slowly.
"Eventually we arrived within two miles of the sacred city of Lassa. We were fortunate in finding a cave in the mountains, wherein we could lie hidden. If our presence had been discovered we should undoubtedly have been made captives to be dealt with according to the passing mood of the Dalai Lama. . .
"When night came on, I stole forth alone from our hiding place. As I look back, I shiver even now as I think of that night's adventures. Something in the uncanny, grim coldness of the forbidden country seemed to chill my blood to ice. My teeth chattered and my knees trembled so that it was a wonder I was able to reach the temple at all. I frankly dreaded to go forward and nothing on earth could have made me turn back. I feared cowardice more than I feared danger, just as some men would rather face death than ridicule.
"At the open door of the temple I paused and peered nervously within. A faint light burned near the altar upon which stood the Golden Buddha. To this day I could not describe the furnishings of that temple if you were to offer me all the treasure of the Incas. My eyes were glued upon that little Golden Buddha. I gloated over it as avariciously as any miser might gloat over money. I think, now, that at that moment I was temporarily delirious as a result of the terrible hardships we had encountered on the road to Lassa. But at the moment I did not wonder at my intense cupidity. To long to possess that statue of Buddha seemed the most natural thing in the world.
"I stole into the temple unchallenged.
I might have been walking
through a dead city for all the
opposition I encountered. Five minutes
later I had the idol in my possession
and was fleeing back to the
mountain solitudes. And now fear
conquered. I sped down that mountain
pass as if pursued by a thousand
warlike hillsmen. Every shrieking
wail of the wind among the jagged
rocks seemed to me like the war cry
of my pursuers. And yet I sped
down that dark and silent ravine absolutely
alone. Not a single Tibetan
followed me.
"In some unknoown way I reached the cave and fell exhausted at the feet of my two guides, Ben Ali Reyham and his comrade. That night I lay and tossed on my blanket in the wildest delirium. When rooming came I was in the grip of a raging fever. So it was impossible for us to return to Simla. I could not walk a single step.
"During the next two weeks my brain recorded little of the happenings about me. I just lay weak and only semi-conscious, at the point of death. Every day my companions expected the last spark of life to flicker out of my wasted body. Yet somehow I pulled through.
"At the beginning of the third week the fever lifted and I regained full consciousness. I was still very weak, but there was no longer any doubt of my recovery.
"Then it was that Ben Ali Reyham approached the blanket on which I lay. 'Master,' he said, 'the ways of Allah are marvelous. He has drawn suspicion away from us and placed it upon the heads of the two old men who used to guard the temple of the Golden Buddha. The Dalai Lama has decreed that they must die to atone for the theft. If, within the next ten sunrises, the Golden Buddha is not returned, they are to be tied together, hand and foot, and east into the river.
