ding by the door."

So the Jackal Rajah's wife ran to the door to meet her husband, and
because the jackal's skin was burned, and he could wear it no longer,
he continued to be a man for the rest of his life, and gave up playing
all jackal-like pranks; and he and his wife, and his father and mother
and sisters-in-law, lived very happily all the rest of their days.

_The Bird of Truth_

Once upon a time there was a very poor fisherman, who lived in a
little hut on the banks of a river. This river, although deep, was
calm and clear, and, gliding from the sun and noise, would hide itself
among the trees, reeds, and brambles, in order to listen to the birds
who delighted it with their songs.

One day when the fisherman went out in his boat to cast his nets, he
saw a casket of crystal slowly drifting along with the stream. He
rowed toward it, but what was his horror at seeing two little babies,
apparently twins, lying in it upon a bundle of cotton! The poor
fisherman pitied them, took them out, and carried them home to his
wife.

"What have you got there?" she exclaimed, as he presented them to her.
"We have eight children already, and as if that were not enough, you
must bring me some more!"

"Wife," replied the poor fisherman, "what could I do? I found these
dear little creatures floating on the river below, and they would have
died of hunger, or have been drowned, if I had not rescued them.
Heaven, which has sent us these two more children, will assist us to
provide for them."

And so it proved; and the little ones, a boy and a girl, grew up
healthy and robust, together with the eight other children. They were
both so good, so docile, and so peaceable, that the fisherman and his
wife loved them exceedingly, and always held them up as examples to
the other children; but they, envious and enraged, did them a thousand
injustices and injuries. To escape from these cruelties, the twins
would take refuge together among the thickets and on the river's
banks; there they would divert themselves with the birds, and carry
crumbs of bread to them; and the birds, grateful to them for their
kindness, would fly to meet them, and teach them the bird-language.
The children learned to converse with the birds very quickly, and thus
they could amuse themselves with their feathered friends, who also
taught them many other very good and useful things, one of them being
how to get up early in the morning, and another, how to si