Bhagat hopes to escape from poverty and sets off on a journey to audition for a Rajah's musical troupe with just one rupee from his mother and with a chain of seven gold rings which remains from her wedding necklace. An inn keeper demands one gold ring per night, payable in advance, but a goldsmith wants one rupee to separate any of the links in the chain. Bhagat, a fine thinker as well as a musician, finds an ingenious solution and has the links of the chain separated in a particular order which enables him to pay for the seven nights he waits until the time for his audition. His singing is not quite polished enough for the Rajah, but the innkeeper's wife intervenes and explains the boy's mathematical ingenuity in preventing waste, and suggests he takes over the management of the Rajah's estates instead. An author's afterword explains the binary system behind Bhagat's skill and by doing so explains how computers and all other devices make use of binary code.