abominable was the humiliation of its broken manhood.
Presently the girl glanced up at the white man.
"The Tûan knows Âwang Îtam?" she inquired.
Yes, the white man knew him well by sight, and had spoken with him on many occasions. He had not, however, seen him for many months.
"This is he," said the girl, indicating the crippled wretch who sat rocking and moaning by her side; and her words administered as sharp a shock to the white man as though she had smitten him across the face.
Âwang Îtam, when he had last seen him, had been one of the smartest and best favoured of the “King's Youths," a fine, clean-limbed, upstanding youngster, dressed wonderfully in an extravagantly peaked kerchief and brilliant garments of many-coloured silks, and armed to the teeth with Malayan weapons of beautiful workmanship. Among the crowd of lads who strutted like peacocks, and looked upon life as a splendid game in which love affairs were the cards and danger the counters, he had been preëminent for his swagger, his daring, and his successes. What had befallen him to work in him so appalling a transformation in the space of a few months? It was for the purpose of revealing this secret to the while man, in the hope that thereby a tardy retribution might overtake his oppressors, that he and Bêdah had sought this stolen interview.
In every independent Malay state the bûdak râja, or "King's Youths," are an established insti-
