"I, Alfred Carson, M.D., who relate to you this story, do most solemnly swear to you by all a Christian gentleman holds most sacred, that though stranger far than any fiction, it existed in fact, and that the relation of it here set forth--to which my signature is duly appended--is in each and every particular true. At the time these events occurred, I occupied the post of physician to the Rao of Kikat, which was an unconsidered kingdom in the Northern part of India. I say 'was' advisedly, for since the year of the Mutiny it has been absorbed in our Asiatic Empire. But in 1859--the date of the facts herein related--it was still an independent state, reigned over by Rao Singhapetty, it is true, but free and wealthy nevertheless. Still the Rao, in a small measure, was tributary to the H.E.I.C., and it was to release himself from a nominal payment that he engaged to take part in the great rising. To his folly in this respect this story is due. "In those days, I was young, poor, rash, and ambitious, yet not without, I think, good parts, mental and moral. If I failed to control the one by the other, the blame for such must lie with Michael Trall. He was one of those rascally adventurers who then infested India, in the hope of becoming Nabobs; fertile in resource, of great courage, and one of the most unscrupulous scoundrels who ever played the part of Mephistopheles for the seduction of weaker spirits to ruin and crime. Whence he came I know not. I conclude his past life was too disreputable to be disclosed, but my knowledge of him dates from the year 1857, when he appeared at the Rao's court, and used his impudent arts to secure an ascendency over the mind of that weak potentate. There he came into contact with me, and with Bellairs.