We followed her a second time, Lady Meadowcroft giving in after a feeble protest.  The priests in yellow looked on, profoundly impressed by our circumnavigation.  It was clear they began to reconsider the question of our nefarious designs on their holy city.

After we had finished our second tour round the drum, with the utmost solemnity, one of the monks approached Hilda, whom he seemed to take now for an important priestess.  He said something to her in Tibetan, which, of course, we did not understand; but, as he pointed at the same time to the brother on the floor who was turning the wheel, Hilda nodded acquiescence.  “If you wish it,” she said in English—­and he appeared to comprehend.  “He wants to know whether I would like to take a turn at the cylinder.”

She knelt down in front of it, before the little stool where the brother in yellow had been kneeling till that moment, and took the string in her hand, as if she were well accustomed to it.  I could see that the abbot gave the cylinder a surreptitious push with his left hand, before she began, so as to make it revolve in the opposite direction from that in which the monk had just been moving it.  This was obviously to try her.  But Hilda let the string drop, with a little cry of horror.  That was the wrong way round—­the unlucky, uncanonical direction; the evil way, widdershins, the opposite of sunwise.  With an awed air she stopped short, repeated once more the four mystic words, or mantra, and bowed thrice with well-assumed reverence to the Buddha.  Then she set the cylinder turning of her own accord, with her right hand, in the propitious direction, and sent it round seven times with the utmost gravity.

At this point, encouraged by Hilda’s example, I too became possessed of a brilliant inspiration.  I opened my purse and took out of it four brand-new silver rupees of the Indian coinage.  They were very handsome and shiny coins, each impressed with an excellent design of the head of the Queen as Empress of India.  Holding them up before me, I approached the Buddha, and laid the four in a row submissively at his feet, uttering at the same time an appropriate formula.  But as I did not know the proper mantra for use upon such an occasion, I supplied one from memory, saying, in a hushed voice, “Hokey—­pokey—­winky—­wum,” as I laid each one before the benignly-smiling statue.  I have no doubt from their faces the priests imagined I was uttering a most powerful spell or prayer in my own language.

As soon as I retreated, with my face towards the image, the chief Lama glided up and examined the coins carefully.  It was clear he had never seen anything of the sort before, for he gazed at them for some minutes, and then showed them round to his monks with an air of deep reverence.  I do not doubt he took the image of her gracious Majesty for a very mighty and potent goddess.  As soon as all had inspected them, with many cries of admiration, he opened a little secret drawer or relic-holder in the pedestal of the statue, and deposited them in it with a muttered prayer, as precious offerings from a European Buddhist.