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 Descending the mounds of the tank, Lawrence Foster untied his horse from the mango tree and rode away, singing lowly the song, he once heard with its echoes from the resounding hills on the banks of the Teviot. At times, he spoke within himself, "The fascination of the snow-white Mary Foster, in which I lost myself in my younger days, is now but a dream. Does change come in the taste of a man, when he comes to live in another land? Is the snow-white Mary to be favourably compared with the flaming beauty of the tropics? I cannot decide."

When Foster left, Shaibalini gently filled her pail and with it she slowly returned home, like the gliding clouds on the back of the gentle breeze of spring. Putting the pail in the proper place, she entered into the bedroom.

In that room, Shaibalini's husband, Chandra Shekhar, sitting on a small piece of blanket stretched on the floor, and having tied, for close attention, both of his thighs with the waist, by a rag painted with sacred symbols, was reading old manuscripts, in the light of the earthen lamp before him. A hundred years have passed since the time of which we are speaking. Chandra