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 by an old and withered hag—his wife of former years—who made a meagre living for him and for herself by hawking sweet-stuffs from door to door. She came to him twice daily, and he flung himself ravenously upon the food with guttural noises of satisfaction, devouring it in bestial fashion, while she cooed at him through the bars, with many endearing epithets, such as Malay women use to little children. Not even his revolting degradation had been able to kill her love, though its wretched object had long ago ceased to understand it or to recognize her, save as the giver of the food which satisfied the last appetite which misery had left to him. He had been ten years in these cages, and had passed through the entire range of feeling of which a Malay captive in a native gaol is capable—from acute misery to despair, from despair, by slow degrees, to stupid indifference and dementia, until at the long last he had attained to the condition which Malays call kâleh. This means a complete insensibility, a mental and physical anaesthesia so absolute that it reduces a sentient human being to the level of an inanimate object, while leaving to him many of the disgusting qualities of an ape.

Talib himself had as yet reached only the first stage of his suffering, and the insistent craving for one breath of fresh air grew and grew and gathered strength, until it became an overmastering longing that day and night cried out to be satisfied. His memories tortured him—memories of the chill morning hour at which he had been wont to step