Philipson sat back in his chair with a frank smile. '_Touché!_' he cried. 'I ought not to have mentioned the state of your finances, if your being hard up disposes you to accept my offer, so much the better for me, but candidly, I was not leaning on that. What I want is breadth of mind, insight, sympathy, imagination. I can find any number of mere situation hunters, but the man of sympathy is rare. To meet that man at a moment when he is looking for an enterprise worthy of him I regard as a piece of unparalleled good fortune. After all, why should you scrape a livelihood writing for a public which can hardly understand you, leave alone appreciate, when you might be bidding for real fame with me?' 'You'd better let me have the story complete, Philipson,' I said. 'With all my heart. You had never heard of me before last night, I take it?' 'Never.' 'It is not greatly to be wondered at. I have spent many years in the East, but somehow the European centres never attracted me. Often I have lived native for long periods together, and beyond the consuls who have registered my name--though I never yet had to ask any other service of them--I do not suppose a dozen men in all China know me. Those that do, know me, I fear, only too well. The gentry who chased us last night in the launch are among that number. But to my story. At one time and another I have done much exploration in the interior. I have been in many places where I am convinced no white man has been before or since. The routes taken by travellers like Huc and Sven Hedin and the Prince of Orleans across the so-called "unknown" regions of Tibet I would guarantee to follow blindfold. There is not much to be found up there except snow and ice and scenery--that is, at least, by people who are obliged to hurry straight across, on the stretch about their food supply all the while. If the climate and the nature of the country allowed one time to explore, I fancy a lot of strange things would turn up. I found something very strange indeed, but it was only by the merest accident.' 'What was it?' 'An _obo_. You know what that is, of course?' 'A Tibetan prayer-mound, isn't it?' 'Exactly. They are to be found sometimes even in the uninhabited regions, having been erected by pilgrims crossing the heights. The _obo_ consists of slabs of slate--which often lies ready to hand on the mountain sides--set up like a house of cards and inscribed all over with Tibetan characters. Most European explorers who come upon one of them for the first time imagine they have got hold of something noteworthy, but disappointment awaits them. That historic record they thought they had discovered turns out, on examination, to be no more than an endless reiteration of the Tibetan devotional formula, _Om Mane Padme Hum_--"O the Jewel of the Lotus."' 'Yet you say it was something strange you found?'