all about the palace and what
the wind had said. "If I were the king," said the second bed-leg, "I
would have that palace pulled down. It is quite ready to fall; and the
first time the king goes into it, it will fall on him and kill him."
The king lay, and listened to everything. As it happened, he had
forgotten all about his old palace, and had not gone near it for a
long time.

Then the third bed-leg said, "Now I will go out and see all the fun I
can. Stand firm, you three, while I am away." He went to a
jungle-plain on which lived a yogi. Now there was a sarai[5] not far
off in which lived a woman, the wife of a sepoy, whose husband had
gone a year ago to another country, leaving her in the sarai. She was
so fond of the yogi, that she used to come and talk to him every
night. That very day her husband came back to her, and therefore it
was later than usual when she got to the yogi; so he was very vexed
with her. "How late you are to-night," he said. "It is not my fault,"
she answered. "My husband came home to-day after having been away a
year, and he kept me." "Which of us do you love best?" asked the yogi;
"your husband or me?" "I love you best," said the woman. "Then," said
the yogi, "go home and cut off your husband's head, and bring it here
for me to see." The sepoy's wife went straight to the sarai, cut off
her husband's head, and brought it to the yogi. "What a wicked woman
you are to do such a thing at my bidding!" he said. "Go away at once.
You are a wicked woman, and I do not want to see you." She took the
head home, set it again on the body and began to cry. All the people
in the sarai came to see what was the matter. "Thieves have been
here," she said, "and have killed my husband, and cut off his head,"
and then she cried again. The third bed-leg now went back to the
palace, and told the others all it had seen and heard. The king lay
still and listened.

The fourth bed-leg next went out to see all it could, and it came to a
plain on which were seven thieves, who had just been into the king's
palace, and had carried off his daughter on her bed fast asleep; and
there she lay still sleeping. They had, too, been into the king's
treasury and had taken all his rupees. The fourth bed-leg came quickly
back to the palace, and said to the other three legs, "Now, if the
king were wise he would get up instantly and go to the plain. For some
thieves are there with his daughter and all his rupees which they have
just