he should not have forgiven. Succeeding to his father in A.D. 1530, he was instantly engaged in war--fruitless war. Brave to a fault, not without intelligence, something always seemed to stand between him and success. The story of his failure to relieve Chitore is typical of him. Its widowed Râni, in sore straits to save it for her infant son from the hands of Bahâdur-Shâh, King of Guzerât (one of the many kings who snatched at every opportunity of enlarging their borders), sent a Râm-Rukhi, or Bracelet-of-the-Brother, to Humâyon. Now this Brother-Bracelet is in Râjasthân what a lady's glove was to chivalry. Only in greater degree, for the recipient becomes a brother--a bracelet-bound brother. There is no value in the pledge. It is generally a thin silk cord, to which are attached seven differently-coloured tassels; but once given and accepted by the return of a tiny silken bodice, called a _kachli_, it is an inviolable tie. In her extremity Kurnâtavi sent hers to Humâyon, whose fame as a puissant knight had reached her ears. He was enchanted with the romance of the idea, and instantly left the campaign on which he was engaged to go to her rescue. And then? Then he dallied. Then he became involved in a wordy, witty, pedantic war in verse with Bahâdur-Shâh, in which much point was laid on the resemblance of the name Chitore to some other word; in the midst of which the city fell, and suffered yet one more sack. But the most memorable event of the early years of his reign was, however, the siege of Chunar, where he found himself first matched against the man who was eventually for a time to wrest his kingdom from him, and send him out a wanderer on the face of the earth for twelve long years. This siege, which Humâyon felt compelled to carry through before marching on Bengal, was in reality a deep-laid plan of the rebel Sher-Khân. It was a method--often adopted in modern warfare, but until then unheard of in the East--of holding up his enemy's forces until such time as he had consolidated his own powers. It answered admirably. The rock of Chunar, detached outpost of the Vindhya mountains which frowns over the Ganges, engaged all Humâyon's attention for months, and when, after reducing it, he pushed on, Sher-Khân once more met brute-force by guile, and leading Humâyon on, left him to stew for the rainy season in the delta of the Ganges, a prey to flood and fever, while he himself looked down on him from the low hills of Northern Berars. It was a bitter beating! A prey to mosquitoes, to malaria, it was with difficulty that Humâyon's troops managed to preserve their communications with their base. Every tank was a lake, every brook a river. Their spirits sank, and no sooner were the roads opened than they deserted in hundreds; Prince Hindal--who, despite the virtue of being nearly always faithful to his brother, appears to have been of little good to him--setting the example by leaving ere the rains had stopped.