ike the new moon in her beauty, so slim and white and shining was
she.

The brothers wove a hut of branches to shelter their sister, and every
day ten of them went out hunting in the forest, and ten of them stayed
at home to care for her. But one day it chanced they all wished to go
hunting together, so they put their sister up in a high tree where she
would be safe from the beasts of the forest, and then they went away
and left her there alone.

The twenty brothers went on and on through the jungle, farther than
they had ever gone before, and so came at last to an open space among
the trees, and there was a hut.

"Who can be living here?" said one of the brothers.

"Let us knock and see," cried another.

The Princes knocked at the door and immediately it was opened to them
by a great, wicked-looking Rakshas. She had only one red eye in the
middle of her forehead; her gray hair hung in a tangled mat over her
shoulders, and she was dressed in dirty rags.

When the Rakshas saw the brothers she was filled with fury.

She considered all the jungle belonged to her, and she was not willing
that any one else should come there. Her one eye flashed fire, and she
seized a stick and began beating the Princes, and each one, as she
struck him, was turned into a crow. She then drove them away and went
back into her hut and closed the door.

The twenty crows flew back through the forest, cawing mournfully. When
they came to the tree where their sister sat they gathered about her,
trying to make her understand that they were her brothers.

At first the Princess was frightened by the crows, but when she saw
there were tears in their eyes, and when she counted them and found
there were exactly twenty, she guessed what had happened, and that
some wicked enchantment had changed her brothers into this shape. Then
she wept over them and smoothed their feathers tenderly.

After this the sister lived up in the tree, and the crows brought her
food every day and rested around her in the branches at night, so that
no harm should come to her.

Some time after this a young Rajah came into that very jungle to hunt.
In some way he became separated from his attendants and wandered
deeper and deeper into the forest, until at length he came to the tree
where the Princess sat. He threw himself down beneath the tree to
rest. Hearing a sound of wings above him the Rajah looked up and was
amazed to see a beautiful girl sitting there among the b