The mother forbore to urge a measure to which she saw her child so decidedly opposed, but her disappointment was severe. She feared that her daughter would never perpetuate her race, and that she was destined to be the parent of a degraded offspring--degraded even among the outcasts of the Hindoo population. The father was no less unhappy, but he did not interfere with the prejudices of a beloved child. In truth, he felt the force of these prejudices, and forbore to divert them. He was a wealthy man, and there was no moral reason why she should not pursue the bent of her own conscience, when it did not lead her into practical dereliction. Yhahil was thus left uncontrolled to follow the impulses of her own feelings. One morning she was bathing in the river with a female attendant. While standing in the water, draining it from her long flowing hair, a scream from the woman beside her directed her attention to an object which paralysed her with horror. A large alligator was rushing towards her with the velocity of a sunbeam. She shrieked and closed her eyes; in a moment a plunge near her caused her to look up, and she beheld the unhappy Goutama in the creature’s jaws. “I have saved thee, Yhahil,” he cried faintly, and the monster immediately plunged with its victim beneath the deep dull waters. The surface was slightly tinged with blood; a few bubbles rose, which were the only indications of what was passing below. The lovely Pariah made the best of her way to the bank, upon which she fainted. Her woman had witnessed the magnanimity of Goutama. Happening to pass at the moment of the alligator’s approach towards its intended victim, he had marked her peril, and, plunging into the stream, preserved her life at the expense of his own. Yhahil returned to her home in tears. She thought that such a man should have been reserved for better things. She felt she could have loved him had he not been a Pariah, and his melancholy death cast over her spirit a gloom which did not readily subside. The intensity of his passion, proved by the sacrifice of his life, awoke in her bosom the tenderest sympathies. Still there was no disguising from her heart that she could not have married him, even had he escaped destruction, while that moral blight was upon him which rendered him an object of public scorn, and of silent, though undeserved, reproach. Time sped on, but there was no change. The desolation of sorrow had passed over the outcast’s dwelling. His wealth was no blessing. He bowed to his idols in vain; they heard not his supplications, and his prayer returned to his own bosom. He still pursued his occupation, and money was daily added to his stores, but this did not render him happy. His daughter, the child of his tenderest attachment, was alone in the world, and with all his gold he could not purchase for her the boon she sought.