The beach on one side of the town was very retired, and, beyond the battlements landward, flanked by a thick wood. Hither the women repaired to perform their matutinal ablutions, and being considered a spot sacred to this purpose, it was seldom or never intruded upon, except on chance occasions by the stranger. Here, as I have already said, according to her invariable practice, about the period of sunrise, a beautiful young Hindoo mother was performing those lustrations imposed by her religion, and which, apart from any spiritual consideration, are indispensable in a tropical region. The beach sloped gradually into the sea, in which she stood up to the shoulders, her long black hair streaming like a silken fringe upon the rippling waters. Her eyes were frequently bent downward, as if in reverential abstraction, after which she would raise them to the clear blue sky, rich with the pure tints of heaven, and brightened by the fresh genial radiance of the morning sun. She was only dawning into womanhood though a mother, her age not being yet sixteen. Her child was lying on the beach wrapped in a small coverlet, and basking in the young sunlight. The babe was but a few weeks old, and the youthful mother felt for it all the yearning of a parent for her first child. She looked at it occasionally from the place where she stood, draining the water from her streaming tresses, and cleaning them with a care that showed a consciousness of their beauty, and her eye glistened with a parent’s pride as she gazed upon the earliest fruit of her wedded love.