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Higher still, in the sheltered clefts of the mountain, are the silver birches, most spiritual of trees, who love the rare air and breathe the communal mystery of the hills. When the breeze plays in their leaves they betray the spirit of the grove, like the shadow of an emotion passing over a young girl's

ive as Amarnath. It is not

purple squadron striding the blast, the serried mast forest so wild and remote; it does breasting the precipice, the not give one the sense of bravest flung forward in the coming to an end of the teeth of the glacier, with the created world; but it is far dead white-topped trunks of more beautiful. The norththe fallen all round them. eastern buttress of Haramokh which overhangs it is one of the grandest rock faces in Kashmir. The grey shelves of glacier meet in a lap of ice which falls sheer into the green waters of the lake. A flowery marge carpeted with the bright pink lousewort with the white eye separates the first lake from a large crescentshaped sheet of water. It is here, where clouds gather and pass among the dripping precipices, where the eagle screams, and the thunder of the avalanche is heard all day, that the Kashmiri comes to bury the knuckle-bones of his dead, left over from the funeral pyre.

face.

It is easy to believe that the genii of a place dwell in the trees. They even more than the flowers express the mood and spirit of the earth. The Bassahris in the Sutlej valley believe that every tree has its little Deva, and whenever they fell one they place a stone on the lopped trunk to keep the genius within. The Druids knew it, who worshipped the oak, and the Greeks, who had faith to see the Dryads; the Burmans know it, who offer grain to the djinns who dwell in trees of greatest girth; and every lover of the woods knows it by instinct from a child.

It was inspiriting to be up among the silver birches again. It is a wild country at the baek of Haramokh, so scattered that the birches hang over the eastern cliff of the lake at an elevation of 12,500 feet. We crossed a narrow ridge and came suddenly upon the lake. The scene is, though in a different way, as impress

We approached Gangabal by a detour through a chaotic tumbled mass of rock hurled by

some titanic upheaval across the pasture. In places the boulders stood over our heads, and we took nearly an hour crossing. In one narrow stretch where cattle had crossed we came upon blood sprinkled on the rock as if with intention, and it occurred to me that it might have been shed there in propitiation to the djinns of the place by some superstitious herdsman, as who should say, "Here's your blood. Take it. But let my cattle pass.'

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The rattle of the hidden stream underneath increased the mysterious gloom of the

basin. Phillips and I both felt giddy and sick, though we had not been affected at 15,000 feet, which made us think at the time that mountain lassitude is a local ailment due, as the natives believe, to the malignant influence of certain places.

Again we had just missed the hour of pilgrimage. On the way down below Wangat I met an old man holding a wand in front of him, with a small green bag tied to the end like a child's purse, and one bright marigold stuck in the loop. It held his son's knuckle-bones. We met whole families after that, with the remains of every kind of relative, and priests innumerable, who would exact the last pie for the Shrader ceremony, the shriving of the soul and the mass for the dead, which is held at the meeting of the streams between the two lakes.

It is odd that the Kashmiri Pundit, to whom the Hindu of the plains will admit no shred of virtue or self-respect, much less any delicacy of spirit, has conceived and practises the most poetical burial - rites the world knows. His pilgrimage, however, saves him a larger

journey. The Hindu of the plains throws the knuckle-bones of his dead into the Ganges. The Hindu of Kashmir, believing that Gangabal is the source of the Ganga, from which convenient error it derives its name, makes this arduous ascent in the hottest month of the year and casts the relics of his dead into the lake.

"Here,

here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened."

The still lake of Gangabal, which sleeps in the bosom of Haramokh, may well symbolise the eternal peace. There is nothing here to detach the mind from the everlasting. Here, if anywhere, the soul of man may be made one with Nature. So the Kashmiri asks that, when his unhappy spirit is dismissed to wander through its endless cycle of rebirths, the one enduring part of him which has survived the flames may be lapped in the green waves beneath the glacier, rolled in its oozy granite bed, and become an indestructible part of the material world, laid upon the supreme altar, in the deep lake, among the foundations of the hills.

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"You seem put out a bit?" Parker examined the strength of the chair, as usual, before he sat down.

Wendern took out his cigarette case. "I am; not by them, but by my own folly. I wonder if you ever saw the prospectus of this precious Syndicate. I'll show you it;" he opened a drawer at the bottom of the writing-table. "You needn't trouble, George; I saw it out there."

"Do you know anything about the Directors? To my eternal disgrace I hardly know anything, though I'm one of them."

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"That was some years ago. He'd been dead a good while before this prospectus was put up, I can tell you."

"Dead!"

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"You see you've been drifting about the world a good deal, George, and lost touch with things out yonder."

"It is eight years since I was there. Do you know anything about Golbreath?"

"There are a good many Golbreaths knocking round at various doors: this one has

been mixed up in all sorts of concerns, but I never heard of one he had to do with that came to any good. There was no harm in him- he was 8 happy-go-lucky, borrow-yourmoney, stand-you-a-drink sort of customer. But you're always such a dreamy chap; most men mixed up in 8 Syndicate business are wide awake, you can take my word

Copyright in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

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Parker watched Wendern roll his cigarette and light it. "You see you always had it."

"My people were poor enough once; then they scooped it in, but they had not learnt how to use it before they died."

"Well, when your turn came you gave it away right and left, so you have nothing to reproach yourself with anyhow. Every poor devil who brought you his tale went away richer than he came."

I

"Because I had more than I knew what to do with. only gave what I didn't want and didn't value."

"You didn't hoard it; you weren't a miser."

"There's no virtue in abstaining from a vice you are not tempted to commit," Wendern said bitterly. "I gave because people asked me, and it was easier to give than to refuse. If they were poor, I gave, so that I mightn't be worried by thinking of their poverty. I took no trouble to see that the money would be spent wisely, or that the people who had it were not impostors. I gave for any scheme that amused me-or to any jackass I liked who had a tomfool scheme on,

in fact, I gave; but not for the sake of any good it might do. How much does that sort of generosity count to one? What did it cost me to give? It was no effort. I didn't miss anything, went without nothing.'

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"Well, it's better to give than to hoard. A good circulation is everything, whether it's blood, or money, or a newspaper."

"And this precious Syndicate. Lant amused me,-I liked his insolence-his confidence; he asked me to put in £20,000, and I did. And because I put in my easily gained thousands, people who had seen me about in London, or who had heard that I was rich, or were deceived by the precious prospectus, put in money they could ill afford, all they had. And some of them-many of them, perhaps -stand to be ruined in con

sequence. But I'll prevent that, though I sell my last stick. Directors of companies who take no trouble about their responsibilities, guineapigs, hawkers of one-pound shares, who think of nothing but their own battening and fattening, while the fools who are caught by their names starve, or break their hearts, are often worse thieves than the men who go to prison for vulgar stealing."

"But you're not one of them, George?"

"I identified myself with them. I did from want of thought, or knowledge, what other men do deliberately. The result is the same; and

it's the results that matter to others."

Wendern realised then how much he had felt about the

"That's true, George, that's Syndicate business from the true."

"Great God! If I could only pay off these little shareholders."

"You will. The Dock case is going to settle up matters for you.'

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"It may go against me."

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'Well, never mind if it does but it can't. It's one of the things I came to say. It's safe certain."

"If that's so, things will straighten out," Wendern said and wrinkled his forehead. "Every man in the Syndicate shall get back the money he put in through any influence of mine, and Lant shall do the same with the rest I'll throttle him. Who gave you your information?"

or

"The Agent-General; I've just been to him. He had a cable this morning."

"It seems to be making a stir; the papers give an account of it every morning, and they cable me the pith of each day's hearing. If it goes right the worries will be at an end."

"I think they are coming to an end, George." The kind ly face lighted up; Wendern vaguely wondered at it.

"Well, I shall have learnt a lesson. Let's talk of something else."

There was a pause before Parker ventured to ask, "Seen Miss Fiffer lately? I didn't mention her when I was here the other morning, but I should like to know how things are going in that direction?"

VOL. CXCI.-NO. MCLVII.

fact that for the last hour he had even forgotten he was expecting to hear from Katherine. "I went to see her the other day; she's coming home this afternoon, I believe," he said.

"Well, she's got some cash; if you marry her”

"I shall never touch it. Not a penny of it, not a cent; I've made up my mind to that."

"But what would you expect her to do with it?"

"Keep it. Spend it as she likes best-and have it out with her own conscience. Oh, I've thought things over in the last few days, Joe, and I'll tell you this, the responsibility of money is the lesson that rich men have to learn.'

"You see, they like to get something out of it for themselves."

"Of course they do. I don't mean that they should give it all away to charities or to a class that is poor only because it won't work. The idle poor are as bad as the idle rich

worse, for their idleness often brings consequences more tragic, more immediate at any rate. It's too big a subject to discuss now; but if I were a law - maker, fooling away money should be a crimenot spending.

The man who knows how to spend properly is all right, but the people who fool it away, rich or poor, are criminals."

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