The moment I approached her, however, I was seized with inexpressible dismay; pity and astonishment, mingling with a sense of supreme indignation, held me speechless for a time. She was naked to the waist, and chained,--chained like a wild beast by one leg to a post driven into the ground, and without the least shelter under that burning sky. The chain was of cast-iron, and heavy, consisting of seven long double-links, attached to a ring, and fitted close to the right leg just above the ankle; it was secured to the post by a rivet. Under her lay a tattered fragment of matting, farther on a block of wood for a pillow, and on the other side were several broken Chinese umbrellas. Growing more and more bewildered, I sat down and looked at the woman in a sort of helpless despair. The whole scene was startlingly impressive; the apathy, the deadness, and the barbarous cruelty of the palace life, were never more strikingly brought before me face to face. Here there was no doubting, no denying, no questioning the fact that this unhappy creature was suffering under some cruel wrong, which no one cared to redress. Naked to the waist, her long filthy hair bound in dense masses around her brow, she sat calmly, uncomplainingly, under a burning tropical sun, such as we children of a more temperate clime can hardly imagine, fierce, lurid, and scorching, nursing at her breast a child full of health and begrimed with dirt, with a tenderness that would have graced the most high-born gentlewoman. I remained long and indignantly silent, before I could find voice for the questions that rose to my lips. But at length I inquired her name. "Pye-sia" (begone), was her fierce reply. "Why art thou thus chained? Wilt thou not tell me?" I pleaded. "Pye" (go), said the woman, snatching her breast impatiently from the sucking child, and at the same time turning her back upon me. The child set up a tremendous scream, which was re-echoed through the strange place. The woman turned and took him into her arms; and as if there were an indwelling persuasiveness about them, he was quieted in an instant. Rocking him to and fro, with her face resting against his unwashed cheek, she was no longer repulsive, but glorious, clothed in the beauty and strength of a noble human love. I rose respectfully from the low wall of the pond, where I had seated myself, and took my place on the heated pavement beside the woman and her child; then as gently and as kindly as I could I asked his name and age. "He is four years old," she replied, curtly. "And his name?" "His name is Thook" (Sorrow), said the woman, turning away her face. "And why hast thou given him such a name?" "What is that to thee, woman?" was the sharp rejoinder.