BOOK II
I. THE TARTAR SLAVE
Nine years had passed since Noren had left his home—nine years of varying fortunes in fields of battle. Noren was now a young man of twenty-five, and an officer in the army, but his estate was still under the management of the Imperial Agent. No news from Birnagar or Debipur reached Noren, and his frequent marches and counter-marches left him little time to think of home. Time dulls the first feelings and impulses of youth; separation loses its bitterness, and early disappointments are borne easily enough as years pass by. Nevertheless, recollections of his childhood—of the Palace gardens and the lake temple at Birnagar—sometimes came back to Noren, and amidst all the distractions, and even the excesses of a camp life, an image of purity and of love sometimes claimed a sigh from the weather-beaten soldier. But all recollections of the past were now dimmed, for Noren was now lying half-unconscious on a bed of sickness. He had been delirious with high fever for days and nights, strange women had nursed him in a strange land, and physicians had shaken their heads over the restless patient. But rest and kind attendance and the vitality of youth had brought him back from death's door.
He woke up one midnight. Silver cressets, suspended in silver chains, threw a chastened light on a
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