ravines, so deep that they could scarcely hear the roar of the foaming torrents rushing among the great boulders below as they crossed on swaying suspension bridges of iron chains.  These had been built hundreds of years before by long-forgotten Chinese engineers.  Three chains on one level supported the bamboo or plank footway, while one on either side served as a hand-rail, and a bamboo or grass lattice-work between them and the roadbearers hid from sight the deep gorge below.  Often these bridges were only of ropes of twisted withes or grass and swung and swayed in terrifying fashion with the motion of the traveller.  There were broad rivers over the eddying, swirling waters of which strong cantilever bridges of stout wooden beams were pushed out from the steep banks.

Truly a beautiful land Bhutan, at its loveliest perhaps in spring, when the hills and upland meadows where the yaks graze, ten thousand feet above the sea, blaze with the mingled colours of anemones blue and white, of yellow pansies and mauve and white irises, of large white roses and small yellow ones, of giant yellow primulas with six tiers of flowers, when the oaks and the chestnuts are clothed in young green, and the apricot, pear and orange trees are in bloom, when large and lovely blossoms cover that little-known tree that the Bhutanese call chape, when the bright green of the young grass runs up to the white snowfields.  The woods are full of a pretty ground orchid, beautiful trailing blossoms of others droop from the boughs of the great trees, and on the magnesium limestone hills one of the rarest orchids grows in profusion.

But to the two pilgrims of Love the land seemed beautiful even now that the winter was not far distant.  In the silent woods, hidden from prying eyes, they sat hand in hand and whispered to each other over and over again the oldest, sweetest story that the Earth has known.  Strange to hear words of love from the lips of such a weird-looking couple; yet Muriel in her quaint disguise with her silky hair cropped to the scalp was as beautiful in her lover’s eyes as when he had seen her in her prettiest frocks.  And she thought the yellow-skinned, wrinkled old lama infinitely more attractive than the gay young subaltern of Ranga Duar—­for he was her own now.  Such is Love’s glamour.  Muriel had forgiven royally.

Bhutan is a Buddhist-ruled land, therefore slaying for sport and fishing in the rivers is prohibited; nay, more, the Maharajah sometimes forbids the killing of even domestic animals for food.  So wild life abounds.  The fugitives often saw flocks of burhel—­called nao in Bhutan—­feeding on the precipitous slopes of the higher hills.  Once Frank and Muriel excitedly watched a snow-leopard stalking one of these big-horned sheep sixteen thousand feet above the sea-level.  And in these heights they even saw an occasional lynx or wolf, generally only to be found in the highest elevations bordering on Tibet.  Silver-haired langur