h.'"

Quickly passed the snowy fabric into the hands of the lord of the
castle, who sent it as a present to the Empress in Kioto. All were
amazed by it, and the Empress commanded the donor to be richly
rewarded. The farmer husband, bearing a thousand pieces of coin in his
bag, hastened home to spread the shining silver at his mother's feet
and to thank the wife who had brought him fortune. A feast followed,
and for many weeks the family lived easily on the money thus gained.
Then, when again on the edge of need, Musai asked his wife if she were
willing to weave another web of the wonderful Crane's-down cloth.

Cheerfully she agreed, cautioning him to leave her in privacy, and not
to look upon her until she came forth with the cloth.

But alas for the spirit of prying impertinence and wicked curiosity!
Not satisfied with having been delivered from starvation by a wife
that served him like a slave, Musai stealthily crept up to the paper
partition, touched his tongue to the latticed pane, and poked his
finger noiselessly through, thus making a round hole to which he glued
his eye and looked in.

What a sight! There was no woman at work, but a noble white crane--the
same that he had seen in the field, and from whose back he had
extracted the hunter's arrow. Bending over the spinning wheel, the
bird pulled from her own breast the silky down, and by twining and
twisting made it into the finest thread which mortals ever beheld.
From time to time, she pressed from her heart's blood red drops with
which to dye some strands, and thus the weaving went on. The web of
the cloth was nearly finished.

Musai astounded looked on without moving, until suddenly called by his
mother, he cried out in response, "Yes, I'm coming."

The startled crane turned and saw the eye in the wall. Throwing down
thread and web she moved angrily to the door, gave a shrill scream and
flew out under the sky. Like a white speck against the blue hills, she
appeared for a little while and then was lost to sight.

Son and mother once more faced poverty and loneliness, and Musai again
splashed barelegged in the rice field.

_Little Surya Bai_

A poor Milkwoman was once going into the town with cans full of milk
to sell. She took with her her little daughter (a baby of about a year
old), having no one in whose charge to leave her at home. Being tired,
she sat down by the roadside, placing the child and the cans full of
milk beside her; when, on