sight
he took out the splinter and the lameness at once ceased. Then he
mounted the mare and rode after his brothers, and when he had nearly
overtaken them he rose into the air and flew past his brothers and
arrived first at home. There he tied up the mare outside his house
and went and bathed and had his dinner and waited for his brothers.

They did not arrive for a full hour afterwards and when they saw
the monkey boy and his mount they wanted to know how he had got home
first. He boasted of how swift his mare was and so they arranged to
have a race and match their horses against his. The race took place
two or three days later and the monkey boy's mare easily beat all the
other horses, she gallopped twelve _kos_ on the ground and twelve
_kos_ in the air. Then they wanted to change their horses for his,
but he said they had had first choice and he was not going to change.

In two or three years the monkey boy became rich and then he announced
that he wanted to marry; this puzzled his mother for she thought that
no human girl would marry him while a monkey would not be able to talk;
so she told him that he must find a bride for himself. One day he set
off to look for a wife and came to a tank in which some girls were
bathing, and he took up the cloth belonging to one of them and ran
up a tree with it, and when the girl missed it and saw it hanging
down from the tree she borrowed a cloth from her friends and went
and asked the monkey boy for her own; he told her that she could only
have it back if she consented to marry him; she was surprised to find
that he could talk and as he conversed she was bewitched by him and
let him pull her up into the tree by her hair, and she called out to
her friends to go home and leave her where she was. Then he took her
on his back and ran off home with her.

The girl's father and relations turned out with bows and arrows to
look for the monkey who had carried her off but he had gone so far
away that they never found him. When the monkey boy appeared with his
bride all the villagers were astonished that he had found anyone to
marry him, but everything was made ready for the marriage as quickly
as possible and all the relations were invited and the wedding took
place and the monkey boy and his wife lived happily ever after.

XVI. The Miser's Servant.

Once there was a rich man who was a miser. Although he kept farm
servants they would never stay out the year with him; but ran