Another time it was a family group at food, eating by the wayside.  The group consisted of a stout, ruddy-faced woman with close-cropped hair, hung with many necklaces of coral and turquoise, and waited on by her three meek and submissive husbands, all brothers—­for this is a land of polyandry.  She invited the fugitives to share their meal, and bade her dutiful spouses serve the supposed lamas.  They proffered cooked rice coloured with saffron and other food in the excellent Bhutanese baskets woven with very finely split cane.  These are made in two circular parts with rounded top and bottom pieces fitting so well that water can actually be carried in them.  From sealed wicker-covered bamboos the hosts filled choongas (bamboo mugs) with murwa, the beer of the country, and chang, the native spirit.  Frank and Muriel refused the liquor; but Tashi drank their share as well as his, to give the pious peasants an opportunity of acquiring merit.  And wife and husbands thought themselves amply rewarded by a muttered blessing.

A very different figure was that of a man lame of the right leg and limping painfully down a steep hill in front of the fugitives.  Muriel, full of pity, whispered to her lover after they had passed him:  “Oh, the poor wretch!  Did you see, dear, he had lost the right hand as well?” But she shuddered when she learned that the cripple was a murderer punished by the severing of the tendons of the leg and the loss of the hand that struck the fatal blow.

In the cultivated valleys, where barley, buckwheat and mustard grew, there were everywhere evidences of the religious feeling of the Western Bhutanese.  Every hill was crowned with a gompa or chapel, chortens and praying-wheels stood beside the road, and mendongs or praying-walls, a mile long, their stones engraved with sacred words, were built near habitations.

In the villages the disguised fugitives were well treated.  Food and lodging were offered them freely in the cabins as in the great houses of officials and rich folks, where they spent hours watching the skilled artisans among the feudal retainers of their hosts weaving silk, making woollen and cotton garments, brocade and embroideries, or hammering artistic designs on silver or copper plates backed with lac.  None suspected the three of being other than they seemed.  The Buddhism of Bhutan and Tibet to-day has but one article of faith—­“Acquire merit by feeding and paying the lamas and they will win salvation for you.”  So rich and poor vied in giving their best to the holy wayfarers, and sought not to intrude on the meditations or privacy of lama and chela, and welcomed the cheery company of the more worldly lay brother who could crack a joke or empty a mug with any man and pitch the stone quoits or shoot an arrow in the archery contests better than the village champion.