but he went a very little
way, and then returning, hid himself in his wife's chamber. She being
quite satisfied that he was really gone away, invited her gallant to
pass the evening with her, and began to spend it with him in
unrestrained freedom. Presently, by chance, she detected the presence of
her husband, and her manner instantly changed.

'Life of my soul! what ails you?' said her lover; 'you are quite dull
to-night.'

'I am dull,' she replied, 'because the lord of my life is gone. Without
my husband the town is a wilderness. Who knows what may befall him, and
whether he will have a nice supper?'

'Trouble thyself no more about the quarrelsome dullard,' said her
gallant.

'Dullard, quotha!' exclaimed the wife. 'What matter what he is, since he
is my all? Knowest thou not--

'Of the wife the lord is jewel, though no gems upon her beam;
Lacking him, she lacks adornment, howsoe'er her jewels gleam?'

Thou, and the like of thee, may serve a whim, as we chew a betel-leaf
and trifle with a flower; but my husband is my master, and can do with
me as he will. My life is wrapped up in him--and when he dies, alas! I
will certainly die too. Is it not plainly said--

'Hairs three-crore, and half-a-crore hairs, on a man so many grow--
And so many years to Swerga shall the true wife surely go?'

And better still is promised; as herein--

'When the faithful wife,[17] embracing tenderly her husband dead,
Mounts the blazing pile beside him, as it were the bridal-bed;
Though his sins were twenty thousand, twenty thousand times o'er-told,
She shall bring his soul to splendor, for her love so large and bold.'

All this the Wheelwright heard. 'What a lucky fellow I am,' he thought,
'to have a wife so virtuous,' and rushing from his place of concealment,
he exclaimed in ecstasy to his wife's gallant, 'Sir I saw you ever truer
wife than mine?'

'When the story was concluded,' said Long-bill, 'the King, with a
gracious gift of food, sent me off before the Parrot; but he is coming
after me, and it is now for your Majesty to determine as it shall please
you.'

'My Liege,' observed the Brahmany-goose with a sneer, 'the Crane has
done the King's business in foreign parts to the best of his power,
which is that of a fool.'

"Let the past pass," replied the King, "and take thought for the
present."

"Be it in secret, then, your Majesty," said the Brahmany-goose--

'Counsel unto six ears sp