Ledha in it on his head. When Ledha woke up towards morning, he
found himself being carried through dense jungle and he quietly pulled
himself up into one of the trees which overhung the path. Thus when
the leopard put down the bed and was going to eat Ledha, he found it
empty. So he went back on his track and by and bye came to the tree
in which Ledha was hiding. The leopard begged Ledha to come down,
as he had something to say to him, and promised not to eat him; but
directly Ledha reached the ground the leopard said "Now I am going to
eat you." Ledha was powerless, so he only asked to be allowed to have
one chew of tobacco before he died; the leopard assented and Ledha
felt in his cloth for his tobacco, but the tobacco did not come out
easily and as Ledha felt about for it the dry tobacco leaves crackled;
the leopard asked what the crackling sound was, and Ledha said "That
is the lizard which bit you yesterday;" then the leopard got into a
terrible fright and ran away as hard as he could, calling out "Don't
let it loose: Don't let it loose."

So Ledha was saved from the leopard, but he did not know his way out
of the jungle. He wandered about, till he came to the place where the
wild buffaloes used to sleep at night, and he swept up the place and
made it clean and then took refuge in a hollow tree; he stayed there
some days, sweeping up the place daily and supporting himself on the
fruit of a fig-tree. At last one day the buffaloes left one cow behind
to watch and see who it was who swept up their sleeping place. The cow
pretended to be too ill to rise, and Ledha after watching for some
time came out and swept the ground as usual, and then tried to pull
the sick cow up by the tail; but she would not move so he went back to
his hollow tree. When the buffaloes returned they heard that it was a
kindhearted man who cleaned their sleeping place; so they called Ledha
out and said that they would keep him as their servant to clean their
sleeping place and to scrub them when they bathed in the river; they
made him taste the milk of all the cows and appointed the cow whose
milk he liked best to supply him. Thenceforward he used to wander
about with the buffaloes and he made a flute and used to play on it.

One day after scrubbing the buffaloes he washed his head in the river
and some of his hairs came out; so he wrapped them up in a leaf and
set the packet to float down the stream. Lower down the stream two
princesses were