a confidential _cheti_ on account of
her cleverness and beauty: as well she might, since the little jade is
very pretty, and clever enough to be prime minister to any king. And
between the two of them, who are more than a match for any man that
ever lived, Shatrunjaya had no chance at all. Little did he know
Tarawali, thinking to keep her beauty to himself, or confine the
ocean of her charms to a tank! Poor fool! what a trick they played
him! For Chaturika says, that Tarawali gave another lover the very
_rendezvous_ she fixed for him, bidding her _pratihari_ say she was
gone. Well he might go mad, for as I think, any other man might lose
his reason, to be kept standing outside the door, while his mistress
was kissing another man!

And he laughed out loud, as he ended: but I rose up from the ground,
drawing my _kattari_ from its sheath. And I leaped out of the bushes
suddenly upon those two laughers, who took me for a ghost in the form
of the god of death. And I struck at one with the knife, and as luck
would have it, I all but severed his head from his body at a single
sweep. And I turned upon the other as he stood terror-stricken,
staring at me with open mouth, and I said: Thy jest was very good, but
mine is better still. I am Shatrunjaya, and not mad after all: but
thou shalt not tell my secret to Narasinha; whom I will send after
thee in good time. And I struck the knife into his eye, so hard, that
I could scarcely pull it out again by putting my foot upon his head.

And I left them lying, and went home quickly, laughing to myself, and
saying: Now they are paid beforehand, with their work still to do, in
coin very different from that of Narasinha. And his own turn will
come, by and by. And I wonder whose life I have saved, for I never
caught his name. But no matter: I have learned, what is left for me to
do: and it only remains to determine on the way. Alas! Narasinha, thy
star is beginning to decline. Thou hast just lost thy assassins, and
presently I will deprive thee of Tarawali, and last, I will rob thee
of thy life.

XXII

And then, day by day, I rose early in the morning, and ate the
breakfast of a bull-elephant, and went out into the streets, hunting,
not for a forest beast, but for a human quarry. And I roamed up and
down through the city all day long, examining everything I met that
had the shape of a woman with the eye of a hunting leopard. And so I
continued, day after day, without success. And then