Doctor Churi was, in fact, a person out of the ordinary. He had been the child of a Rajput woman and an Arab. For his birth, his mother had been put to death, and he himself, in his babyhood, sold into slavery. Before he was even aware of the existence of right and wrong, he had been made a creature apart from ordinary men. And when he was old enough to understand this, his soul rose up in revolt. From that time, his whole nature was warped; and he became an iconoclast in his every thought. His brain was unquestionably fine. His talent for medicine was manifested at an early age, when he tried to poison himself with opium, and was only saved by the quick skill of the doctor in whose charge he was still living. Under this man’s tuition, he gained his knowledge of anatomy and the power of herbs. At the age of eighteen he was sold to Rai-Khizar-Pál, his education having trebled his value. At the time of the transaction, Churi was made aware of the sum paid for him; and it was then that his great idea came: which was, by some means to obtain the equivalent of the amount, and with it buy himself into liberty. Since that day, twelve years had passed away. Churi was thirty years old; and the little hoard of copper pieces which he had been able to store up, was still pitiably small. Meantime his heart had grown bitter, and his mind had taken to winding through tortuous ways of perception and imagination. He was known to many evil thoughts, but to few evil practices. And there was in him a volcanic passion of humanness kept relentlessly in check, that occasionally betrayed itself above the surface in some eccentric outburst. The man led a solitary and loveless existence; yet as all human things must know some softening of the heart toward some one, so Churi had, by degrees, come to feel a strong interest, a more than interest, in the Ranee Ahalya, the universally beloved. She was very different from the other women in the zenana; and Churi had been first attracted to her by the quality rarest in women: that quality which she had in marked degree, and he not at all—disinterestedness. Because she had never had ends to gain, because she curried favor with none, he gave her the only genuine devotion that he had ever felt for any one; and, where her interests were concerned, was accustomed to waive his own. Perhaps it was this instinct in him that had suggested the lie to Kasya; and thereby, probably, he saved the life of Fidá. But it was quite for his own amusement that Churi now lay on his divan considering the incidents of the afternoon. All the result of these thoughts was, that he decided to see something of the Asra in the near future, and that the Lady Ahalya would perhaps bear a little watching also.