ey had to drop down again.
At the fourth corner he saw a huge demon who was heating sand in an
enormous iron pot, under which he kept up a big fire.

The prince returned to his wife, and told her all he had seen. "Do you
know who the happy man and woman are?" she said. "No," he answered.
"They are my father and mother," she said. "When they were alive, I
was good to them, and since their death I gave half their money to the
poor; and on the other half I have lived quietly, and tried to be
good. So God is pleased with them, and makes them happy." "Is that
true?" said her husband. "Quite true," she said. "And the miserable
man and woman who did nothing but cry, do you know who they are?"
"No," said the prince. "They are your father and mother. When they
were alive, you gambled and drank; and they died of grief. Then you
went on gambling and drinking till you had spent all their money. So
now God is angry with them, and will not make them happy." "Is that
true?" said the prince. "Quite true," she said. "And the fishes you
saw were the two little children we should have had if you had taken
me to your home as your wife. Now they cannot be born, for they can
find no bodies in which to be born; so God has ordered them to rise
and sink in the air in these fishes' forms." "Is that true?" asked the
prince. "Quite true," she answered. "And by God's order the demon you
saw is heating that sand in the big iron pot for you, because you are
such a wicked man."

The moment she had told all this to her husband, she died. But he did
not get any better. He gambled and drank all her money away, and lived
a wretched life, wandering about like a fakir till his death.

Told by Muniya, March 8th, 1879.

[Decoration]

NOTES.

INTRODUCTORY.

In these stories the word translated God, is _Khuda_. Excepting in
"How king Burtal became a Fakir" (p. 85), and in "Raja Harichand's
Punishment" (p. 224), in which Mahadeo plays a part, the tellers of
these tales would never specify by name the god they spoke of. He was
always _Khuda_, "the great _Khuda_ who lives up there in the sky." In
this they differed from the narrator of the _Old Deccan Days_ stories,
who almost always gives her gods and goddesses their Hindu
names--probably because, from being a Christian, she had no religious
scruples to deter her from so doing.

When the heroes of these stories are called Rajas, the word Raja has
been kept: when they are called Badshahs, we