Page:Cradle Tales of Hinduism .djvu/182

158 forth from the prison, he entered, and saw a light burning in the first room within the doorway. The lamp stood by the bedside of a sleeping mother and a new-born child. Quietly, quietly Vasudeva bent down and exchanged the children. To the farmer-chieftain's wife he gave the Babe he carried, and from her side he took the little daughter who slept there. Then, without a word, he turned and went back by the way he had come, to the dungeons of Kansa, in the city of Mathura, and gave the girl-child of Nanda to his own wife, Devaki.

Great was the rejoicing amongst the cowherds when they all woke up in the morning and found that the child whom they remembered as a girl was really a boy. For this was the only explanation of the mystery that occurred to them. It is said indeed that that morning there was no food to eat in the house of Nanda, for all the pots of milk and curd fell from the hands of the women when they heard the news, in their astonishment and delight. Then thousands of people came, and every one was fed, and wealth was distributed and there was great rejoicing. So this is always kept in India as Nanda's Feast, and on the day before, as the people believe, there is always rain.

But in the stronghold of Kansa, it was told that morning that a child had been born in the night to Devaki and Vasudeva, Then was the heart of