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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(NOVEMBER, 1902.
The lad stirred out as usual, put away the tortoise-covering underneath the cot, and, partaking of some corry and rice, went to Devendraloka. His mother, smarting from the pain of Jer finger, soon awakened, and got up and found that the tortoise had gone. Her grief had better be imagined than described.
"The gods gave me a tortoise, and I did not despise the gift! And now the tortoise is taken from me," lamented the, and commenced searching about the palace and found a tortoise-covering.
"I understand now," mattered the queen, my child has gone somewhere. He will come back soon." With these words she tóre the covering to shreds and went to her slumber again.
Presently the lad returned and could not find the covering and so he aroused his mother. She got up, took him in her lap, and, impressing sweet kisses on his cheeks, upbraided him. "Sonnie dear, you have been hiding yourself for so long and have never shown yourself to these sinful eyes even for a day."
"Make me a box, mother dear," said he, "and in it keep my food. That shall be my habitation for a season, because my corering is torn." His mother did as she was bidden, and the lad stayed in the box, receiving his education in the Devendraloka.
Meanwhile the king's two sons received their instruction at the hands of a good Pandit.
One day the minister said to the king: "The palace could be made charming beyond measure if only we possessed the Nymph of the Wire Hill;" the king at once began to long for the unattainable, and became extremely uneasy, and, refusing food and drink, laid himself down on a cot in great depression of spirits. The younger wife got ready his bath and food and came and asked her husband to get up and take his bath and food.
"No, I do not want any," said he. She entreated him with tears, but it was of no avail. "I do not want anything" was all he would say to his wife's entreaties.
In the meantime the princes came and approacbed the king and spoke: "O father dear, what ails you ? why are you so depressed ? what do you want? what can we do for yon?"
"If you bring me," said the king, "the Nymph of the Wire Hill, I will look on you as brave men. If you don't, I'll have your heads off, and I'll hang them on the gateway of the fortress."
Immediately the two princes set ont, and the son of the senior queen also wanted to go; and when she questioned him, "Why do you go, Sonnie dear? you are so beautiful,"
"I must go, mother," he replied ; "if the Nymph of the Wire Hill is not brought to him, my father will die. He has refused food and drink. My brothers cannot bring her. I must go and bring her."
The queen thereupon applied some lamp-black to the boy's face in order that he might appear dark, and he set out on his winged horse, wishing his mother farewell. In due course be came to a city where the water, which issned from the baths of the daughter of the reigning king, formed into a large stream, and the princess had set up a pillar in it with an inscription to the effect that she would marry him who would jump across the stream. The two prinees had been there, but after reading the inscription had said, "Wbo could jump so large a stream," and had forded it and passed on. But the third lad examined the stream, and, saying to himself that it only issued from a bath, spurred on his horse at it, and in the twinkling of an eye leapt across it.
The princess, who was looking on from her balcony, observed the feat and said to her father:
"Two young men have forded the river, and a third one, who is following them, jumped across the stream, He is to be my husband."
