Still even to these frozen wilds of Central Asia spring comes at last.  One evening the air felt warm, and that night there were only a few degrees of frost.  The next the clouds banked up, and in the morning not snow was falling from them, but rain, and we found the old monks preparing their instruments of husbandry, as they said that the season of sowing was at hand.  For three days it rained, while the snows melted before our eyes.  On the fourth torrents of water were rushing down the mountain and the desert was once more brown and bare, though not for long, for within another week it was carpeted with flowers.  Then we knew that the time had come to start.

“But whither go you?  Whither go you?” asked the old abbot in dismay.  “Are you not happy here?  Do you not make great strides along the Path, as may be known by your pious conversation?  Is not everything that we have your own?  Oh! why would you leave us?”

“We are wanderers,” we answered, “and when we see mountains in front of us we must cross them.”

Kou-en looked at us shrewdly, then asked—­“What do you seek beyond the mountains?  And, my brethren, what merit is gathered by hiding the truth from an old man, for such concealments are separated from falsehoods but by the length of a single barleycorn.  Tell me, that at least my prayers may accompany you.”

“Holy abbot,” I said, “awhile ago yonder in the library you made a certain confession to us.”

“Oh! remind me not of it,” he said, holding up his hands.  “Why do you wish to torment me?”

“Far be the thought from us, most kind friend and virtuous man,” I answered.  “But, as it chances, your story is very much our own, and we think that we have experience of this same priestess.”

“Speak on,” he said, much interested.

So I told him the outlines of our tale; for an hour or more I told it while he sat opposite to us swaying his head like a tortoise and saying nothing.  At length it was done.

“Now,” I added, “let the lamp of your wisdom shine upon our darkness.  Do you not find this story wondrous, or do you perchance think that we are liars?”

“Brethren of the great monastery called the World,” Kou-en answered with his customary chuckle, “why should I think you liars who, from the moment my eyes fell upon you, knew you to be true men?  Moreover, why should I hold this tale so very wondrous?  You have but stumbled upon the fringe of a truth with which we have been acquainted for many, many ages.

“Because in a vision she showed you this monastery, and led you to a spot beyond the mountains where she vanished, you hope that this woman whom you saw die is re-incarnated yonder.  Why not?  In this there is nothing impossible to those who are instructed in the truth, though the lengthening of her last life was strange and contrary to experience.  Doubtless you will find her there as you expect, and doubtless her khama, or identity, is the same as that which in some earlier life of hers once brought me to sin.