The largest grotto has been converted into a Buddhist temple; all along the richly tinted rock-walls are contemplative images of the Buddha, and in the centre, just where is concentrated the richest depth of coloring, lying on a horizontal bed of rock, is a large sleeping idol of the same inevitable figure, with the same mysterious expression about the closed eyelids, as if he were in the habit, even in sleep, of penetrating distant worlds, in his longing to gaze upon the Infinite. Lower down the mountain lies a calm lake, with its smooth silvery surface ever and anon broken by the leaping of a fish, as if to prove that it is water and not glass, and beyond the lake are more mountains rolling up into the sky in purple and green folds, with the faintest of blue borders and crimson-tipped edges, for they are many miles off. It was evening, and we had just spent a delicious fortnight here, teaching in the mornings and rambling in the evenings, and his Majesty had assured me, to my great delight, that we should stay yet another while among the mountains; my boy and I had retired to our little rocky nest, around which there was an impression of savage grandeur and of loneliness almost overpowering, and where I used to imagine the "Hill Giants," of whom I had heard so much, lurking in secret in the caves and hollows, as ready to tear the Royal Mountain from its base and cast it into the gulf beyond, for the pitiless way in which the monarch doomed those poor five hundred slaves to toil on and on, without any prospect of ever coming to an end, in smoothing and shaping its rugged sides. And it was here that I first realized and appreciated the belief of the simple people about me in ghosts and spirits, pleasant and unpleasant:-- "Genii in the air, And spirits in the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts with eyes as fair As starbeams through the twilight trees." But in spite of them all we were sleeping soundly that night in the third story of our little eyry, when, about three o'clock in the morning, the sound of tocsins, gongs, and trumpets was flung out all over the distant hills and mountains, and re-echoed tauntingly, like the cry of so many demons full of mad sport, in the multitudinous voices of the rocky solitudes. We were suddenly transported from deep sleep to wide-awake realities, to find the royal palace all alive with lights and sedans and horsemen, and torch-bearing, shadowy phantoms, issuing from dark portals, gliding hither and thither among the rocks, and coming towards us. What did it all mean? The whole thing looked so mysterious that I at first thought the king was dead, or that the palace was besieged, or that the "favorite," Peam, taking advantage of the mountain fastnesses, had run away. The torchlight phantoms proved to be veritable brawny Amazons, who came to inform us that the court would return to Bangkok within an hour. "What! not stay another fortnight?" I inquired, sadly.