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108
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1897.
On this the Rakhas was pacified, and made the princess take her natural form by the waving of his golden magic sword, after which she ministered to his wants.
For six months, short of six days, the princess treated the prince with every mark of kind. ness, but making him resume human shape only in the absenco of the ogre. One day he told her that he had remained long enough, and was, therefore, very anxious to depart, but wished that she should ask the ogre wherein his life lay. She accordingly on a day when he was extromely pleased with her, thus spoke to her ogre-father: -
"Father, father, will you tell me where your life is P For I am afraid of what will become of me when you are dead."
“Do not be anxious, my child," replied the ogre; " for my life is very safe, and not accessible to any human being. It is in the form of a parrot, hung high up to an iron shaft, in the middle of the waters of the seven and seven seas, which no man hath crossed. When the neck of this bird is wrong, then only shall I die, and not till then."
Having heard these words, the prince sammoned his kind friends, the white crows, with the aid of the feather, and, sitting on the wings of the hen while the cock shaded him by its wings from the piercing rays of the sun, crossed the seven seas, and espying the other seven seas, discovered just in middle of them an iron column to which was suspended a cage with a bird in it. The prince at once climbed the column, took out the parrot, broke its legs, pulled away its wings, and then wrung its neck. This being done, he returned to Lalan's palace, which he had left without telling her, and on being informed that her ogre-father was killed, she set up a loud lamentation and began to fill the earth and sky with her wailing.
The prince consoled the princess in her affliction, and before long threw a little frankincense on the fire and turned over it the magic feather and so summoned his constant friends, the white orows, and, sitting on their wings with Lá lan, he reached their home, where, after spending a few days with great pleasure amidst their progeny and in their company, he bade a farewell to the friendly birds, and started for the hut of his mother, who received him and Lâlan. Here the prince regretted that he should have in his haste forgotten to bring the låls, for which purpose he had gone to the very distant country, and was bent upon going again to fetch them for the wager's sake.
"Do not be sorry," said the princess, "and I see no need why you should go back to the far off land. In order to get the objects of your desire you have only to twist my neck a little, after transforming me into a bird as my ogre-father used to do by waving in a particnlar manner his golden sword, which I luckily brought with me. When I shed tears, from the pain you will give me, I will drop in 10ls."
Accordingly, changing the princess into a bird, the prince went to the capital of the king with whom he had laid the wager. He placed the bird in a prominent position in the centre of the tank, and after a slight twist of its neck, lo and behold! the tears it shed were changed to rabies, so many as to fill up the tank quite to the brim and over its masonry banks.
While the tank of als was filled thus to overflowing, the tank of pearls was not half filled, though hundreds of carts full of pearls had emptied their contents into it.
Seeing that his reputation was at stake, and his wager lost, the RAJA went to the residence of the young man in the forest privately, and acknowledged him the winner of the wager; and, in so doing, saw and recognized his old Râni. At her feet he fell, and asked her pardon for the grievous mistake he had made in sending her away to the forest. The falseness of the ogre-queen was duly proved later on and she was ordered to be burnt in a lime-kiln.
Taking hịs wife and son, whom he embraced with great affection, the king reached his home and there reigned with his wife, while his son, united in marriage to Lalan, who was no other than the daughter of a king stolen by the ogre when an infant, dwelt with them.
