"This letter has nothing in it that will bring you into any trouble. It is only one of greeting from her brother, my master, the Prince O'Dong Karmatha. O, dear lady, don't say no! the gods will bless and reward you, if, sooner or later, you will put it into her hands; but it must be done with the greatest caution and secrecy, and it may be the means of saving her life. O, think of that, of saving her life! for, if alive, she must be dying of grief and pain to think that we have never yet replied to a letter she sent us almost a year ago." "And where is the prince, your master?" "He is on a visit to the governor of Pak-lat." Saying this, she almost instantaneously sprang out of the window, and fled towards the river, as if conscious of having delayed too long her return home; as she did so, I noticed that she wore in the folds of her skirt a small Laotian dagger attached to her English belt. The storm which had been gathering in strength for hours now burst forth, and for full three hours the thunder and lightning and rain were the only things that could be seen or heard; and I sat in the same spot, lost in anxious fears for the safety of that solitary woman battling with the tremendous currents of the Mother of Waters. It was an awful night. Sick at heart, and full of natural and unnatural fears, I locked up the letter at last in my drawer, and tried to forget in sleep the disturbing events of the day. CHAPTER XVII. AN ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY OF THE WHEREABOUTS OF THE PRINCESS SUNARTHA VISMITA.[29] FOR some time afterwards the mysterious letter remained locked up in my drawer, as nobody whom I knew seemed to be aware even of the existence of such a person as the Princess Sunartha Vismita, much less of her imprisonment in the palace, and I was afraid to open my lips on the subject before a stranger, lest I should inadvertently say something that might still more imperil her health and safety. The king was once more reconciled to me, and had taken me into greater confidence than ever. Just at this time he was laid up with an illness which confined him to his topmost chamber, where I was summoned every day to write notes, or translate, with the help of the native female secretary, English documents into Siamese. On one occasion, as I was at work in a room adjoining the royal bedchamber over a mass of perplexing manuscripts in the king's own handwriting, to be arranged for publication in the "Bangkok Recorder," the chief of the Amazons brought in the intelligence that the prisoner, Princess Sunartha Vismita, was very ill; and, his Majesty being in the best possible humor, having just finished the above-mentioned manuscript, which completely refuted, as he fondly believed, Dr. Bradley's theory of Original Depravity, gave orders that the princess should take an airing in the palace gardens, and be removed to another cell, and that the chief lady physician should attend her without delay.