scampered about everywhere. On a dilapidated bedstead lay an old man
who seemed to be at death's door; his eyes were sunk, his breath
hurried, his lips trembling. By the side of his bed stood an earthen
lamp upon a fragment of brick taken from the ruins of the house. In it
the oil was deficient; so also was it in the body of the man. Another
lamp shone by the bedside--a girl of faultlessly fair face, of soft,
starry beauty.

Whether because the light from the oil-less lamp was dim, or because
the two occupants of the house were absorbed in thinking of their
approaching separation, Nagendra's entrance was unseen. Standing in
the doorway, he heard the last sorrowful words that issued from the
mouth of the old man. These two, the old man and the young girl, were
friendless in this densely-peopled world. Once they had had wealth,
relatives, men and maid servants--abundance of all kinds; but by the
fickleness of fortune, one after another, all had gone. The mother of
the family, seeing the faces of her son and daughter daily fading like
the dew-drenched lotus from the pinch of poverty, had early sunk upon
the bed of death. All the other stars had been extinguished with that
moon. The support of the race, the jewel of his mother's eye, the hope
of his father's age, even he had been laid on the pyre before his
father's eyes. No one remained save the old man and this enchanting
girl. They dwelt in this ruined, deserted house in the midst of the
forest. Each was to the other the only helper.

Kunda Nandini was of marriageable age; but she was the staff of her
father's blindness, his only bond to this world. While he lived he
could give her up to no one. "There are but a few more days; if I give
away Kunda where can I abide?" were the old man's thoughts when the
question of giving her in marriage arose in his mind. Had it never