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HERE was once a certain wood-cutter, the barrenness of whose wife was a constant source of distress to him, the more so as all the neighbours pointed at the couple as especially cursed by Heaven. The husband and wife made the richest presents and the sincerest vows to the goddess Shoshti, the giver of children; and she one day appeared before the wood-cutter in the shape of an old lady, and gave him a cucumber, saying that his wife should eat it entire, without leaving the skin even, on the seventh day from that day. The wood-cutter gave it to his wife with these instructions, but she, in her impatience, ate it up the very next day, even forgetting Shoshti's instructions as to the skin. After the usual period of conception, a male child was born; but the mother was well punished for her disobedience to the goddess. There was hardly anything natural about the child. It was born as a fully developed man, but was only a finger and a half tall, with a tuft of hair behind its head three fingers in length. He could talk and walk from his very birth; and when not even an hour old he started in search of his father, who had gone out wood-cutting.

He passed through many thoroughfares and through the forest, dispersing at one stroke of his feet the grasshoppers and other insects that waylaid him, till he reached a palace gate, where his father was toiling with great drops of perspiration on the forehead. The boy asked him to go home,