The pathway ran through a shrubbery luxuriant with oleanders, jessamine, roses, laurel, and the Indian myrtle. Beneath these small wild rabbits had formed a colony, and it was curious to see a leaf moved upwards mysteriously, a head and ears protrude themselves, or a tail and legs, and then disappear as suddenly. This road ran to a great distance behind the house, and led through nearly three miles of ground, laid out in sugar, rice, cocoanut, and tobacco plantations. A small stream trickled through these, stagnating here and there into deep, green pools. In passing near one of these pools I noticed that my hostess turned away her face, and in answer to my questions, she told me that it was once a large tank, but was now called Tâlataie, the Pool of Death. On further inquiry, I learned that this name had been given it from a tragic circumstance which had happened in her family; that shortly after her eldest daughter's engagement to a young Siamese Christian, the betrothed pair went out for a ramble along the banks of the streamlet. Night descended, and the shadows deepened into midnight, but her daughter and her lover did not return. At length her fears were aroused, and the whole household set out with lanterns to search the grounds; but nowhere could they find a trace of the absent couple until morning dawned upon their fruitless search, when her daughter was found lying on her face in the dark pool, stripped of all the beautiful jewels in which she had arrayed herself on the previous evening; and her Christian lover was never seen or heard of again. "But her spirit still haunts the spot," said the sad mother to me, "and on moonlight nights I see her pale form floating in the pool and crying to us for help." The lady then wiped away her tears with her black p'ha hom, or scarf, and led us into the house. Her husband, a much older and more melancholy-looking person, now appeared, and the slaves brought us a great many delicacies on silver trays. While we partook of them, our hostess asked me a number of questions about my home, friends, children, and relatives. She then informed me that her family now consisted of one son and a daughter, and that the former was a Buddhist priest, serving in the very temple where she had met me. "Where is your daughter now?" I inquired. She pointed to a window which opened into an inner chamber. I looked in, and to my glad surprise saw seated on a low stool, holding an open book in which she seemed wholly absorbed, the same girl who had so attracted me on the Sunday evening previous. Her face was very fine and seemingly full of spiritual beauty, and her figure surpassingly beautiful. While we stood gazing at her, some sudden and apparently painful emotion flitted rapidly across her face as she read in the book, like the shadow of a dark cloud over the quiet water.