"Who comes to disturb our solitude, the solitude of the holy Lamas of the Mountains ?" "Travellers, Sacred One, who have had enough of solitude," I answered in his own dialect, with which I was well acquainted.

"Travellers who are starving and who ask your charity, which," I added, "by the Rule you cannot refuse." He stared at us through his horn spectacles, and, able to make nothing of our faces, let his glance fall to our garments which were as ragged as his own, and of much the same pattern.

Indeed, they were those of Thibetan monks, including a kind of quilted petticoat and an outer vestment not unlike an Eastern burnous.

We had adopted them because we had no others.

Also they protected us from the rigours of the climate and from remark, had there been any to remark upon them.
"Are you Lamas ?" he asked doubtfully, "and if so, of what monastery ?" "Lamas sure enough," I answered, "who belong to a monastery called the World, where, alas! one grows hungry." The reply seemed to please him, for he chuckled a little, then shook his head, saying--"It is against our custom to admit strangers unless they be of our own faith, which I am sure you are not." "And much more is it against your Rule, holy Khubilghan," for so these abbots are entitled, "to suffer strangers to starve"; and I quoted a well-known passage from the sayings of Buddha which fitted the point precisely.
"I perceive that you are instructed in the Books," he exclaimed with wonder on his yellow, wrinkled face, "and to such we cannot refuse shelter.