After the abandonment of this pass, that of Karakoram, forty leagues east of it, became the principal route to Central Asia. The elevation is exactly the same. Of the five hundred and fifteen miles, divided into thirty-five marches, between Leh and Yarkand, a hundred and fifty traverse ice, naked rocks and precipices, wholly devoid of grass or fuel. Still farther east, in the extreme north-eastern angle of Ladakh and the Kashmiri states, a third route to Turkestan has been opened. It is longer than the others, but is practicable for near half the year, and can be traversed by horses and two-humped camels instead of yaks and ponies, as at the western crossings. On three stages only are wood and grass absent. It ascends from the south over a plateau marked by salt or brackish lakes. It is difficult to say which of the three contestant empires, Russia, China and England, has easiest or least impracticable access to the coveted core of Asia. If the handful of Little Tibetans occupy the gallery of the Kashmiri theatre, there are wells in it which go down to the level of the dress-circle. These lower levels have traits of culture--trees, grass, whitewashed brick or stone dwellings, and nunneries and religious monuments on the roadside and sometimes arching the road. All, high and low in rank and topography, are deeply pious, and devote the greater part of their waking hours to muttering a supplicatory formula of six syllables, so far translatable by Christians only to the extent of its meaning something about the Deity and the lotus. [Illustration: ROCK STATUE OF BUDH, LADAKH.] The trip from New York to Jummoo is about as long in point of time as to California twenty-five years ago. As many years hence the survivors of us may be getting up Thanksgiving or Christmas reunions at the old homestead of the Aryan family. It will never be a hackneyed spot. It stands too much on end. Steep mountains are never hackneyed: Cook's Personally Conducted will never permeate Kashmir. EDWARD C. BRUCE. "FOR PERCIVAL." CHAPTER XXXIX. SHORT RECKONINGS MAKE LONG FRIENDS. It was the first of March, and a wild wind was hurrying fragments of white cloud across the blue. Percival had taken his breakfast in snatches, performing on his bell meanwhile. Emma had not brought his boots, and would not so much as come to be told that he wanted them. At last, despairing, he went out on the landing and shouted his request to her as she shuffled on some errand below. Turning to go back, he met Miss Lisle, who had just come down the stairs behind him. [Illustration] They stood for a moment exchanging trivial remarks. To them came a stout, fresh-colored, peculiarly innocent-looking old man, who went by with a beaming smile and a slight bow. "That's Mr. Fordham," said Judith: "I don't think I ever saw him so close before." "No: one hardly meets him from one week's end to another. He is unusually late this morning."