ri. "Then how can you know his
house is on fire!" said Shekh Farid; "I have been a fakir for twelve
years, and for twelve years neither ate nor drank, and yet I do not
know what happens twenty miles away." "But I know," she answered.
"Leave your water-jar here," he said, "and go and see if the house
really is on fire, and I will not drink till you return to me."

So off went Khelapari Rani to her father's country, and when she got
there his house was burning, and she stayed till the fire was put out,
and then returned to the tank where she left the fakir. "Is it true,"
he asked, "that your father's house was on fire?" "Quite true," she
answered. The fakir wondered. "How could she know it when the fire was
twenty miles off?" he said to himself, and he determined to go to
Gulabsa Raja's country to see if the Rani had told him the truth.

He went by a roundabout road, as he did not know the way, so it took
him three or four days to get there. When he did, he asked some
villagers if there had been a fire at their Raja's house. "Yes, a few
days ago there was," they answered. So the fakir, still more
astonished, decided he would go back to Hamansa Raja's palace and ask
Khelapari Rani how it came to pass that she was wiser than Shekh
Farid.

As he was returning, he met a bullock-cart laden with bags of sugar,
and he asked the driver what the bags contained. The driver was put
out because his bullocks would not go on quickly, and he was tired
with beating and goading them, so he said crossly, "It's ashes."
"Good," said Shekh Farid, "let it be ashes." When the cartman got to
the bazar, and went to make over the sugar to the merchant who had
sent him for it, he found all his bags full of ashes, nothing but
ashes. He was in a great state of mind, for a good deal of money had
been paid for the sugar, and he was a poor man. So he went back to
Shekh Farid and fell down at his feet, saying, "I am a poor, poor
man. My sugar is turned to ashes. Do make the ashes sugar again."
"Good," said the fakir; "go home, and you will find sugar, and next
time you are asked what you have in your cart, tell the truth and not
lies." The cartman went home, and when he saw his sugar was sugar once
more, and no longer ashes, he was very, very glad.

One of his brother-villagers thought, "How pleasant it would be to
become a fakir and do such things myself! I will go to this fakir and
learn from him to be a fakir too." So he went after Shekh Farid and