.. SPIES haunt
thy footsteps from the rising to the setting sun.... BEWARE lest thy
fair daughters and thy wife shall disappear!... Our prayers, sahib,
shall attend thee; and our numerous eyes shall remain open to the
PERILS as thou goest EAST where arms are open to receive thee,--but
see thou, sahib, THAT THOU DOST WALK DILIGENTLY IN THE DIRECTION OF
THOSE ARMS!...
"... The Lama backed away.... Never did he cease whirling the prayer
wheel as he spoke ... this constitutes the perpetual prayer of Lamas,
the theory being that the wheel communicates the petition to the air
and, thus, mingled with the elements, it ascends naturally to the
heaven of the blessed.... We were then conducted through a long row of
very low rooms ornamented with a variety of Buddhist statues that have
never been dusted nor apparently disturbed, to an open terrace which
overlooked a dreary waste of gray rocks and broken ledges and offered
to our view the slender roadway that lay like a ribbon across the
plain until it faded into the golden glow of the Eastern horizon....
When I looked at that _single_ road, and recalled the WARNING of the
Lama so solemnly given to my 'prisoner' about the care to be given to
his daughters, I REALIZED FULLY THE MEANING OF THE PRYING EYES that
followed us everywhere after my encounter with the milk-fed MUSSULMAN
disguised as a Hindu mendicant!..."
XIII
AN ENEMY IN PURSUIT
47.
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