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Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with fishes and water-
birds. Two butterfly-winged devas held a wreath over His head;
above them another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the
jewelled headdress of the Bodhisat.

'The Lord! The Lord! It is Sakya Muni himself,' the lama half
sobbed; and under his breath began the wonderful Buddhist
invocation:

To Him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat.

'And He is here! The Most Excellent Law is here also. My
pilgrimage is well begun. And what work! What work!'

'Yonder is the Sahib.' said Kim, and dodged sideways among the
cases of the arts and manufacturers wing. A white-bearded
Englishman was looking at the lama, who gravely turned and
saluted him and after some fumbling drew forth a note-book and a
scrap of paper.

'Yes, that is my name,' smiling at the clumsy, childish print.

'One of us who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Places - he is now
Abbot of the Lung-Cho Monastery - gave it me,' stammered the
lama. 'He spoke of these.' His lean hand moved tremulously round.

'Welcome, then, O lama from Tibet. Here be the images, and I am
here' - he glanced at the lama's face - 'to gather knowledge.
Come to my office awhile.' The old man was trembling with
excitement.

The office was but a little wooden cubicle partitioned off from
the sculpture-lined gallery. Kim laid himself down, his ear
against a crack in the heat-split cedar door, and, following his
instinct, stretched out to listen and watch.

Most of the talk was altogether above his head. The lama,
haltingly at first, spoke to the Curator of his own lamassery,
the Such-zen, opposite the Painted Rocks, four months' march
away. The Curator brought out a huge book of photos and showed
him that very place, perched on its crag, overlooking the
gigantic valley of many-hued strata.

'Ay, ay!' The lama mounted a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles of
Chinese work. 'Here is the little door through which we bring
wood before winter. And thou - the English know of these things?
He who is now Abbot of Lung-Cho told me, but I did not believe.
The Lord - the Excellent One - He has honour here too? And His
life is known?'

'It is all carven upon the stones. Come and see, if thou art
rested.'

Out shuffled the lama to the main hall, and, the Curator beside
him, went through the collection with the reverence of a devotee
and the appreciative instinct of a craftsman.

Incident by incident in the beautiful story he identified on the
blurred stone, puzzled here and there by the unfamiliar Greek
convention, but delighted as a child at each new trove. Where the
sequence failed, as in the Annunciation, the Curator supplied it
from his mound of books - French and German, with photographs and
reproductions.

Here was the devout Asita, the pendant of Simeon in the Christian
story, holding the Holy Child on his knee while mother and father
listened; and here were incidents in the legend of the cousin

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