Page:Malay Sketches.pdf/130

 Oh vengeance! thou art sweet LEWIS MORRIS

On the Perak River, about fifty miles from its mouth, and jus above the tidal influence, where the water is clear and shallow and the banks are lined with palm groves and orchards, there is a large Malay village called Bandar.

More than twenty years ago there dwelt in this village a man named Mĕgat Raja, married to a particularly well-favoured girl named Mĕriam. The fact of her marriage drew her into some sort of notoriety, and her attractions were soon the gossip of the place. The gilder youths of Bandar were fired by the description of Mĕriam's charms, and one of them, a boy of good family, position, and means, got sight of and fell in love with her.