"Sa-baye" (good), said the duke, clapping his hands; "I knew you would give in; you are no fool, Rama. It is the women whom we find so difficult to manage, when they take an idea into their heads. Take him away to his cell now," said he, addressing the guards, "to-morrow we will make it all right, and when the girl comes to the Sala, we shall apprise her of the high honors in store for her. Here," said he, throwing some money to the jailers, "go you and make merry till morning, and be sure and give the prisoner as much as he can eat and drink." The guards departed, leading away a fierce, revengeful-looking old man. When they were gone, the duke, addressing Nai Dhamaphat, said: "What think you of our clemency to our slaves, my son? We would not take possession of this beautiful girl without the old fellow's consent." He then began to laugh, and added: "Ah, she shall be my cup-bearer, and my good friends here will have an opportunity of admiring her beauty!" The son simply bowed his head, in seeming acknowledgment of his father's goodness, and after a while retired from the pavilion, passed over the bridge, and out of the palace gates. There could not be a greater difference of character than that which existed between the duke and his eldest son; the one gross, sensual, cowardly, the other proud and domineering, yet withal brave, generous, religious, and impulsive. Every year found them farther apart in education, thought, feelings, hopes, and aspirations. The one standing, as it were, with his foot on the first step of a ladder that was to lead him towards the highest ideal of Christianity, the other sunk beyond all hope in the ignorance of a savage barbarism. But now this last scene was too much for the former. It snapped asunder the fragile cord that still bound him to his father, and placed him in the position of an antagonist. Every nation has certain constitutional peculiarities which give rise to practices and phases of thought very startling to others, who are, in such points, differently constituted. The most remarkable peculiarity of this kind is the reverence with which parents are regarded in Siam. No matter how unjust, capricious, cruel, and repulsive a parent may be, a child is bound to reverence his or her slightest wish as a sacred obligation. For Dhamaphat, therefore, even to question his father's actions was, he felt, a moral dereliction. He was full of remorse and regret, and thought with despair of the fate that awaited him.