Our fears relieved—­for notwithstanding our foodless night, as yet neither of us showed any signs of exhaustion—­we turned to contemplate the landscape.  At our feet beyond a little belt of fertile soil, began a great desert of the sort with which we were familiar—­sandy, salt-encrusted, treeless, waterless, and here and there streaked with the first snows of winter.  Beyond it, eighty or a hundred miles away—­in that lucent atmosphere it was impossible to say how far exactly—­rose more mountains, a veritable sea of them, of which the white peaks soared upwards by scores.

As the golden rays of the rising sun touched their snows to splendour, I saw Leo’s eyes become troubled.  Swiftly he turned and looked along the edge of the desert.

“See there!” he said, pointing to something dim and enormous.  Presently the light reached it also.  It was a mighty mountain not more than ten miles away, that stood out by itself among the sands.  Then he turned once more, and with his back to the desert stared at the slope of the hills, along the base of which we had been travelling.  As yet they were in gloom, for the sun was behind them, but presently light began to flow over their crests like a flood.  Down it crept, lower, and yet lower, till it reached a little plateau not three hundred yards above us.  There, on the edge of the plateau, looking out solemnly across the waste, sat a great ruined idol, a colossal Buddha, while to the rear of the idol, built of yellow stone, appeared the low crescent-shaped mass of a monastery.

“At last!” cried Leo, “oh, Heaven! at last!” and, flinging himself down, he buried his face in the snow as though to hide it there, lest I should read something written on it which he did not desire that even I should see.

I let him lie a space, understanding what was passing in his heart, and indeed in mine also.  Then going to the yak that, poor brute, had no share in these joyous emotions but only lowed and looked round with hungry eyes, I piled the sheepskin rugs on to its back.  This done, I laid my hand on Leo’s shoulder, saying, in the most matter-of-fact voice I could command—­“Come.  If that place is not deserted, we may find food and shelter there, and it is beginning to storm again.”

He rose without a word, brushed the snow from his beard and garments and came to help me to lift the yak to its feet, for the worn-out beast was too stiff and weak to rise of itself.  Glancing at him covertly, I saw on Leo’s face a very strange and happy look; a great peace appeared to possess him.

We plunged upwards through the snow slope, dragging the yak with us, to the terrace whereon the monastery was built.  Nobody seemed to be about there, nor could I discern any footprints.  Was the place but a ruin?  We had found many such; indeed this ancient land is full of buildings that had once served as the homes of men, learned and pious enough after their own fashion, who lived and died hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago, long before our Western civilization came into being.