Heg. 963 (1556).--Shah Abool Maaly, on account of disputes with the generals of his army in the Panjab, had given time to Secunder Soor to rally his forces. The King accordingly permitted his son Akbar, under the direction of Beiram Chan, to go against him. One evening as the King was walking on the library terrace at Delhi, in consequence of his staff slipping along the marble pavement, he fell headlong, and was taken up insensible. He was laid upon a bed, and although he recovered his speech, he died four days after, about sunset. He was buried in the new city on the banks of the river, and a splendid monument was erected some years after by his son Akbar. Humayoon died at the age of fifty-one, after a reign of twenty-five years, both in Cabul and India. He was a prince of great intrepidity, possessing the virtues of charity and munificence in an eminent degree. The Pariah. CHAPTER I. One morning a poor Pariah was seated at the door of his miserable hovel in a solitary spot not far from the bank of a river. He was in a state of the saddest destitution. Famine had ravaged the district. Thousands of his countrymen had died around him, and he expected every moment a similar doom. His wife was lying with a baby at her breast in a corner of the hut, unable to rise from exhaustion. Food indeed was to be purchased at the neighbouring town, but he had no money, and no one in the bazaar would sell food to a Pariah. He made up his mind to die. For days he tasted nothing but the roots of a few shrubs which grew sparingly upon the river’s bank. The whole of that morning he had followed a drove of oxen, and collected their dung in order to obtain the few grains of gram[24] which it might chance to contain. Having washed the ordure, after a hard morning’s labour he obtained about a handful of grain, which he boiled and gave to his wife. He had himself fasted since the previous day. His wife was a young creature, not yet fifteen, though the mother of three children. He loved her with a fondness as ardent as it was merited, and this fondness was now greatly enhanced by the sad circumstances to which they and their children were likely to become victims.