ching carefully amongst
the thick leaves, found two or three withered little melons still
remaining. These she took into the house and began cutting them up to
cook, when--more wonderful than wonderful!--within each little melon
she found a number of small emeralds, rubies, diamonds and pearls! The
girl called her father and mother and her five sisters, crying, "See
what I have found! See these precious stones and pearls. I dare say,
inside all the melons we sold there were as good or better than these.
No wonder that woman was so anxious to buy them all! See, father--see,
mother--see, sisters!"

Then they were all overjoyed to see the treasure, but the Brahmin
said, "What a pity we have lost all the benefit of my son-in-law the
Jackal's good gift by not knowing its worth! I will go at once to that
woman, and try and make her give us back the melons she took."

So he went to the melon-buyer's house, and said to her, "Give me back
the melons you took from me, who did not know their worth."

She answered, "I don't know what you mean."

He replied. "You were very deceitful; you bought melons full of
precious stones from us poor people, who did not know what they were
worth, and you only paid for them the price of common melons; give me
some of them back, I pray you."

But she said, "I bought common melons from your wife, and made them
all into common soup long ago; therefore talk no further nonsense
about jewels, but go about your business." And she turned him out of
the house. Yet all this time she had a whole roomful of the emeralds,
diamonds, rubies and pearls that she had found in the melons the
Brahmin's wife had sold her.

The Brahmin returned home and said to his wife, "I cannot make that
woman give me back any of the melons you sold her; but give me the
precious stones our daughter has just found, and I will sell them to a
jeweller and bring home some money." So he went to the town, and took
the precious stones to a jeweller, and said to him, "What will you
give me for these?"

But no sooner did the jeweller see them than he said, "How could such
a poor man as you become possessed of such precious stones? You must
have stolen them: you are a thief! You have stolen these from my shop,
and now come to sell them to me!"

"No, no, sir; indeed no, sir," cried the Brahmin.

"Thief, thief!" shouted the jeweller.

"In truth, no sir," said the Brahmin; "my son-in-law, the Jackal, gave
me a melon plant, and in o