Our outfit, therefore, included a dark tent for Hilda’s photographic apparatus; a couple of roomy tents to live and sleep in; a small cooking-stove; a cook to look after it; half-a-dozen bearers; and the highly recommended guide who knew his way about the country.  In three days we were ready, to Sir Ivor’s great delight.  He was fond of his pretty wife, and proud of her, I believe; but when once she was away from the whirl and bustle of the London that she loved, it was a relief to him, I fancy, to pursue his work alone, unhampered by her restless and querulous childishness.

On the morning when we were to make our start, the guide who was “well acquainted with the mountains” turned up—­as villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on.  He was sullen and furtive.  I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan.  He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black hair, tied up in a knot at the nape of the neck with a yellow ribbon.  His face was shifty; his short, stout form looked well adapted to mountain climbing, and also to wriggling.  A deep scar on his left cheek did not help to inspire confidence.  But he was polite and civil-spoken.  Altogether a clever, unscrupulous, wide-awake soul, who would serve you well if he thought he could make by it, and would betray you at a pinch to the highest bidder.

We set out, in merry mood, prepared to solve all the abstruse problems of the Buddhist religion.  Our spoilt child stood the camping out better than I expected.  She was fretful, of course, and worried about trifles; she missed her maid and her accustomed comforts; but she minded the roughing it less, on the whole, than she had minded the boredom of inaction in the bungalow; and, being cast on Hilda and myself for resources, she suddenly evolved an unexpected taste for producing, developing, and printing photographs.  We took dozens, as we went along, of little villages on our route, wood-built villages with quaint houses and turrets; and as Hilda had brought her collection of prints with her, for comparison of the Indian and Nepaulese monuments, we spent the evenings after our short day’s march each day in arranging and collating them.  We had planned to be away six weeks, at least.  In that time the monsoon would have burst and passed.  Our guide thought we might see all that was worth seeing of the Buddhist monasteries, and Sir Ivor thought we should have fairly escaped the dreaded wet season.

“What do you make of our guide?” I asked of Hilda on our fourth day out.  I began somehow to distrust him.