l instrument.

"Well, sir," he said in a thin, halting voice, seeming to find each
word an effort, "what is your pleasure with me?"

"I have come here, sir," I said, "with one whom you will rejoice to
see. This is Mistress Marian Rising, your daughter, who has come out
from England in my company."

For at Marian's prayer I had strictly promised to say nothing about
the manner of her voyage, which might have done her some discredit
with the Calcutta folk.

As I pronounced the above words the girl herself sprang forward and
cast her arms about her father's neck.

"Father!" she said. "Don't you know me--your little Marian, who has
come home!" And she wept on his bosom.

Then it was a pity to see that ancient, stricken man wakening, as it
seemed, out of his trance, and gradually making sure who it was that
embraced him.

"My child! My child! Why have you come here?" he said presently. And
then shed some tears himself, and clasped her to him, and kissed her.

"Where is my mother?" asked Marian, as soon as she had raised her
head.

"Poor child! Your mother has been dead these eighteen months," he
answered sadly. "I should have written to tell you of it, but I was
preparing for my passage home--indeed, I don't know why I have not
started before this."

He gazed round him as he spoke, so as to convince me that indeed he
did not know, and had lost the power--poor man!--to understand his
circumstances or to take any resolution whatsoever.

I came away from that strange scene terrified, not so much by what I
saw, as by an instinct I had that this man's dreadful wreck was only a
sign of that great and abiding horror which lay like a shadow all over
the land; just as in the fable the glimpse of one monstrous foot was
sufficient to warn the spectator that a giant came along. Which
feeling in my mind was rather confirmed than dispelled when I came to
learn, as I soon did, that Mr. Rising's sad condition was brought
about by the drug called opium, a staple of this country, the magical
properties of which herb seemed to me then of a piece with the
frightful sorceries and dark secret practices of the people, as I
afterwards came to know them, and which, with their abominable
idolatrous superstitions, used often to make me wonder that the
Almighty did not destroy them with His plagues of fire and brimstone,
like those wicked Cities of the Plain. Yet one good result of my
observance of these people's horrid customs was to in