THE END OF THE ROMANCE.
TEMPLE AND RUINS OF KAMPOOT.
[A LEGEND OF THE GOLD AND SILVER MINES OF SIAM.]
Vela Chow, or the Beautiful Dawn, was the only daughter of a very powerful king of Ayudia. She was so wondrously beautiful that the old Brahmins and astrologers who foretold her birth named her, even before she was born, the Beautiful Dawn, as the only appropriate name for her.
Now it happened that, at the time of Vela Chow's birth, there was no moon to illuminate the fair earth, but the golden sun and the green earth enjoyed a much closer and more intimate friendship than they now do, and old age, sickness, and death were unknown to the blessed and undying people of Ayudia.
But as the mighty king Somdetch P'hra Batt, the duke of the golden foot, had reigned nearly three thousand five hundred years without ceasing, he became weary of the cares of state, and thereupon abdicated in favor of his young son, P'hra Batt Bandethâno, a vigorous youth of not more than five hundred years of age, who was even from his childhood an especial favorite of the ruby-faced and warm-hearted monarch P'hra Athiett, i.e. the Sun.