At the touch of the cold metal, iron emblem of a child marriage, a
shackle never to be removed, he knew that she was a widow, accounted by
Brahminical caste an offence to the gods, an outcast, because if the
husband still lived she would be in a _zenanna_ of gloomy walls, and not
one who danced as she had at Nana Sahib's.

"And the man to whom you were bound by your parents died?" he asked.

"I am a widow, Sahib, as the iron bracelet testifies with cold
bitterness; it is the badge of one who is outcast, of one who has not
become _sati_, has not sat on the wood to find death in its devouring
flame."

Barlow knew all the false logic, the metaphysical Machiavellians, the
Brahmins, advanced to thin out the undesirable females,--women considered
at all times in that land of overpopulation of less value than men,--by
the simple expedient of self-destruction. He knew the Brahmins' thesis
culled from their Word of God, the Vedas or the Puranas, calculated to
make the widow a voluntary, willing suicide. They would tell Bootea that
owing to having been evil in former incarnations her sins had been
visited upon her husband, had caused his death; that in a former life she
had been a snake, or a rat.

The dead husband's mother, had Bootea come of an age to live with him,
though yet but a child of twelve years, would, on the slightest
provocation, beat her--even brand her with a hot iron; he had known of it
having been done. She would be given but one meal a day--rice and
chillies. Even if she had not yet left her father's house he would look
upon her as a shameful thing, an undesirable member of the family, one
not to be rid of again in the way of marriage; for if a Hindu married her