stolen out of his palace. If he only made haste and went at once,
he would get them again."

The king got up that minute, and called his servants and some sepoys,
and set off to the plain. He shook his shoe before he put it on, and
out tumbled the snake (the other had quietly gone into the jungle, and
not come to the palace); so he saw that the first bed-leg had spoken
the truth.

When he reached the plain he found his daughter and his rupees, and
brought them back to his palace. The princess slept all the time, and
did not know what had happened to her. The king saw the fourth leg had
told the truth. The thieves he could not catch, for they all ran away
when they saw him coming with his sepoys.

The king sent men to the old palace to pull it down. They found it
was just going to fall, and would have fallen on any one who had
entered it, and crushed him. So the second bed-leg had told the truth.

When the king was sitting in his court-house he heard how during the
night thieves had gone into the sarai and killed a sepoy there and cut
off his head. Then he sent for the sepoy's wife, and asked her who had
killed her husband. "Thieves," she said. The king was very angry, for
he was sure the third bed-leg had told the truth as the other three
legs had done. So he ordered the man to be buried; and bade his
servants make a great wooden pile on the plain, and take the woman and
burn her on it. They were not to leave her as long as she was alive,
but to wait till she was dead.

He next sent for the grain merchant's son, and said to him, "Had it
not been for your bed, I should this morning have been bitten by a
snake; and, perhaps, killed by my old palace falling on me, as I did
not know it was ready to fall, and so might have gone into it. My
daughter would certainly have been stolen from me; and a wicked woman
been still alive. So now, to-morrow, bring as many carts as you like,
and I will give you as a present as many rupees as you can take away
on them in half a day."

Early the next morning the merchant's son brought his cart and took
away on them as many rupees as he could in half a day. His wife was
delighted when she saw the money, and said, "My husband only worked
for one week, and yet he earned all these rupees!" And they lived
always happily.

Told by Muniya, February 23rd, 1879.

FOOTNOTE:

[5] That is, a resting-place for travellers, composed of a number
of small houses in a walled enclosure