46. "For purposes of self-protection I shall no longer jot down exactly our location," the next entry reads. I note merely that we are somewhere in Little Thibet and that I have met the MAN IN YELLOW ROBES AND YELLOW TURBAN AT THE LOW WHITE MONASTERY as I was told to do in the _Memorandum_ at Berlin.... And I approached him with the RIGHT FOOT first, my hands held in the appropriate position, until he asked me in excellent French: 'Whence come you?' Then I made the proper sign and whispered the name of the room adjacent to another room which satisfied the Lama that I was the bearer of a MESSAGE to the Exalted Dalai-Lama as well as the principal Khutuktus of the EAST.... My little audience was much mystified, BUT the MAN IN YELLOW ROBES understood.... He began whirling a brass prayer wheel as he advanced toward my 'prisoner' and salaamed.... Then laying his right hand on the 'prisoner's' shoulder the Lama said: 'Your credentials, sahib, are correct,--and it is well; as your misfortunes have been great, great will be the blessings that will fall upon thy family and thy name. Thy piety hath been known to all my brethren, likewise thy toleration,--although the INFIDEL hath been a thorn pressed evilly against thy side ... _beware of that same infidel today_! He is plotting evil HERE against thy very life,--he envieth the lives of thine!... A _religious war_ now breweth in this land!... 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. Local color is given in this note: