"No no, no!—do not say so, Ameer Ali; you saved me from insult, and from a miserable death to which I had doomed myself. I am your slave, not you mine; do as you choose with me; let it be even as you will. I will follow you till death." And she hid her face in my bosom.
"Then," cried I, "beloved, the preparations are soon made. Call Kulloo, and let her know all."
The old woman came, and was overjoyed to hear of my proposal. "I had feared you would not have bound yourself by this tie, Meer Sahib," said she, "and my mind sorely troubled me on the subject; but now I am easy, and I will give my precious child to you with joy and confidence; may you be blessed in her, and see your children's children. Would that I could proceed with you! but I am old, and my bones and spirit would not rest easily in a strange land. Your generosity and what I have scraped together is enough to make me comfortable for life, and when my hour comes I shall die content."
"Then be quick," said I; "put up a screen, and I will call the Moola; you can all three of you sit behind it while the ceremony is read."
A cloth was stretched from one side of the tent to the other, and fastened to the ground: my father, myself, and the Moola sat on one side, the females on the other. "All is ready, Moolajee," said I; "begin."
He opened his book and read the usual service in Arabic. I did not understand a word of it, neither indeed did he; but it was sufficient that it had been read—the ceremony was complete, and Azima was mine for ever.
It would have been a pity to have left Beeder without seeing more of the town and fort, of which I had heard many praises; and in the evening, therefore, my father, myself and a few others strolled into the town for the purpose of seeing what we could. First we passed the old Madressa, a noble mass of ruins; the front was covered with beautiful enamel from top to bottom, and the immense minaret which we had seen from a distance in the morning was also covered with the same. The huge round fragments of another lay scattered about in every direction, and I could well picture to myself the noble building it must have been, ere by an unfortunate explosion of gunpowder, when used as a magazine by Aurungzebe, its front was blown out, one minaret destroyed, and the whole rent and torn as if by an earthquake.
Passing onwards we arrived at an open space before the ancient and majestic ruins of the fort. Piles upon piles of old ruined palaces, in many places built upon the walls themselves, and all nodding to their fall, while they impressed us with a stronger idea of the magnificence of their builders than anything we had as yet seen, were a lesson to humble proud man—to teach him that he too must moulder in the dust as their founders had done: they had stood for centuries; yet now the owl, the bat, and the wild pigeon were the only tenants of these splendid halls, where once beauty had dwelt and had been the adoration of the brave and glorious.
Where were now the princely state, the pomp of royalty, the gallant warriors who had of old manned these lofty walls and towers, and so oft bidden defiance to hosts of invaders?—all were gone,—all was now lonely and desolate, and the stillness accorded well with the ruinous appearance of the scene before us. Not however that the walls were dilapidated or overthrown; they remained as firm and solid as ever; and here and there the muzzle of a cannon, pointing from a loophole or rude embrasure, showed that they were still capable of defence, though, alas! defenders there were none. We thought the place absolutely deserted, and went on to the gateway. It was massive, and highly ornamented with enamel work, such as we had seen before in the old Madressa and the tombs at Golconda.
While we thus stood admiring the outside, a soldier approached us and asked us our business. "We are strangers, who have put up in the town for the day," answered my father, "and we could not leave the spot without looking at the venerable fort of which we have heard so much. May we be permitted to enter?"