off alone
with only a stick in his hand. When he reached the place, he walked
all round it, and saw how much could be made into good arable land,
and then he began to clear it. He pulled up the trees by the roots and
piled them into a heap and he took the rocks and threw them to one side
and made the ground quite clear and smooth, and then went back to the
house. On being asked why he had been so long away, he answered that he
had been pulling up a few bushes at the place which was to be cleared.

The following morning the Strong man told the farm labourers to take
their ploughs to the clearing and begin to plough it. When the farmer
heard this, he was puzzled to think how the land could be ready for
ploughing so soon, and went to see it and to his amazement found the
whole land cleared, every tree pulled up by the roots and all the
rocks removed.

Then he asked the Strong man whether he had done the work by
himself. The Strong man answered "no," a number of people had
volunteered to help him and so the work had been finished in a day.

The farmer said nothing but he did not believe the story and saw that
his servant must really be a man of marvellous strength. Neither
he nor the farm labourers let any one else know what had happened,
they kept it to themselves.

Now the Strong man's wages were twelve measures of rice a year. After
working for four years he made up his mind to leave his master and
start farming on his own account. So he told the farmer that he wished
to leave but offered to finish any work there was to do before he went,
that no one might be able to say that he had gone away, leaving his
work half done. The farmer assured him that there was nothing for
him to do and gave him rice equal to his four years' wages. The rice
made two big _bandis_, each more than an ordinary man could lift,
but the Strong man slung them on to a bamboo and carried them off
over his shoulder.

After he had gone a little way, it struck the farmer that it would
not do to let him display his strength in this way and that it would
be better if he took the rice away at night. So he had the Strong man
called back and told him that there was one job which he had forgotten
to finish; he had put two bundles of sahai grass into the trough to
steep and had forgotten to twist it into string. Without a word the
Strong man wait and picked the _sabai_ out of the water and began
to twist it, but he could tell at once by the feel that th