Here again we find a striking anomaly in the Hindoo character. The parental instinct is as strong in the people of India as in any people of the world; and even where no parental tie exists, the tenderness with which strong, bearded men devote themselves to the care of young children is as touching as it is remarkable. A childless woman, too, is a miserable creature, a hissing and a reproach among men, and barrenness is only accounted for as a punishment for some grievous sin committed against the gods in a pre-existent state. Nevertheless, among the high-caste Rajpoot tribes female infanticide is universally practised; so that, in the district in which Rama was born, owing to its decline from the prosperity of former years, a high-born girl was rarely if ever heard of. On a high and projecting rock, whose scarped and rugged outlines bid defiance to the pedestrian, stood the stately mansion of Dhotee Bhad, the chieftain of Megara, and the father of Rama, recognizable by its grand appearance, its balconies of fretted stone, and its long windows, which commanded for miles the surrounding country. It is a wild and solitary spot, and out of the direct road to any place; but it had two advantages,--it was almost inaccessible, and it overlooked valleys which were as luxuriant with verdure as the hills around were sterile and barren. Two miles from this spot rises the Ghât Meriâh, crowned with a grove of stately trees, whose profound brown shadows and lurid gloom is said to be caused by the spirits of the victims offered up yearly there, and whose grand proportions are dimly visible at points here and there as you approach the grove. At the foot of this Ghât, in a thick and all but impenetrable forest, are several magnificent ponds from which the inhabitants draw their water. Such was the home and the birthplace of our hero Rama. CHAPTER IX. THE REBEL DUKE P'HAYA SI P'HIFOOR. In the year 1831 a revolutionary war broke out in the northern provinces of Siam. The ringleader of this disaffected part of the country was the Duke P'haya Si P'hifoor, a man who, from his high position, great warlike talents, and immense wealth, possessed an unbounded influence over the inhabitants of the northern provinces. It is said that even from his infancy the demon Ambition had taken such possession of him that he used to imagine himself a king, and that, from that time to the fatal termination of his life, he dreamt of nothing but the sceptre and the supreme sway. It was one of his first efforts, therefore, to gather from distant lands all the disaffected and ambitious spirits he could muster together,--men who would be brave and skilful enough to take the helm in the storm that must follow his inexorable bidding.