The ice was thin.
'Very often I beg myself; but, as thou knowest, I am seldom here, except when I come to look again at my disciple.

From one end to another of Hind have I travelled afoot and in the te-rain.

A great and a wonderful land! But here, when I put in, is as though I were in my own Bhotiyal.' He looked round the little clean cell complacently.

A low cushion gave him a seat, on which he had disposed himself in the cross-legged attitude of the Bodhisat emerging from meditation; a black teak-wood table, not twenty inches high, set with copper tea-cups, was before him.

In one corner stood a tiny altar, also of heavily carved teak, bearing a copper-gilt image of the seated Buddha and fronted by a lamp, an incense-holder, and a pair of copper flower-pots.
'The Keeper of the Images in the Wonder House acquired merit by giving me these a year since,' he said, following Kim's eye.