166 Mountain and Monastery 
the father that he was generally to be found drunk in the 
evenings from that day onward. 
Meanwhile we settled down to routine work once more, 
relieved by one or two minor festivals, visits from various 
merchant friends and soldiers, people asking for medicine, 
and Tibetan dancers. These latter were dressed in the 
most brilliant robes of green, blue, purple, and scarlet, with 
aprons of jingling bells fastened round their waists, and the 
women always carried round their necks large amulet boxes 
of silver set with coral and turquoise. They sang ina harsh 
voice while the men footed it gaily to the shivering of the 
bells and the beat of drums. Sometimes a sorcerer appeared, 
anxious to tell everybody’s fortune and cast out devils; there 
must have been any number of the latter lurking in the 
village for he was always in great demand. Then the village 
barber, who had once or twice scraped my face, came with 
a hog bite six inches long and a week old in his arm. He 
had killed a pig for bacon, but the redoubtable beast before 
dying had succeeded in leaving his trade-mark on the 
barber’s arm. 
Knowing on what these scavengers feed I was surprised 
that the wound, which had been liberally smeared with 
butter, was not more loathsome than it was, and giving 
the patient some permanganate to wash it with, and telling 
him to poultice it with ¢samdba, 1 dismissed him, having 
now no time to spare over bizarre medical experiments. 
The wound healed in a week, but whether because of the 
butter or the poultice I cannot say. 
So the last days of September slipped by and autumn 
crept down into the high valleys. 
