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An excerpt from the beginning of CHAPTER I. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. THE earliest thing I can remember is that my father, Ashabad Khan, lived with his two brothers in our village, long, long ago, some fifteen or sixteen miles from Lucknow. The cottage was divided into three tenements, each of which had its separate door, and was shut off from the rest by its own partition wall. The lands the three brothers cultivated were crown lands, belonging to the king at Lucknow, and it was not without difficulty that the rent was paid. It was not the rent alone that made the difficulty, but the exactions of the various king's servants, who claimed sums as their rights over and above the rent, which my father and uncles were afraid to refuse them. My mother had died at my birth, and my only female companion was a cousin, the daughter of a younger brother of my father, who was five or six years older than I, and who took care of me. At length, what with exactions, and what with bad crops, things went from bad to worse, and one year the Sepoys came down upon us to force my father and uncles to pay the rents due, for they were much in arrears. My father and uncles ran away, and I and my cousin were taken off as slaves to the palace in Lucknow. I was about seven years of age, and I am an old woman now of near thirty, but I cannot tell exactly how old I am, or how old I was. This I know, that my father was a good Soonny Mussulman, and that at the court they brought me up as a Sheeah; but I have always been an unhappy creature - unhappy and miserable - since the time when I killed my mother at my birth. What luck or good fortune can the child expect that kills its mother?

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