Page:Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit.djvu/10

 CHAPTER II.

Subha Datta started for the forest, he fully intended to cone back the same evening; but as he was busy cutting down a tree, he suddenly had a feeling that he was no longer alone. He looked up, and there, quite close to him, in a little clearing where the trees had been cut down by some other wood-cutter, he saw four beautiful young girls looking like fairies in their thin summer dresses and with their long hair flowing down their backs, dancing round and round, holding each other's hands. Subha Datta was so astonished at the sight that he let his axe fall, and the noise startled the dancers, who all four stood still and stared at him.

The woodcutter could not say a word, but just gazed and gazed at them, till one of them said to him: "Who are you, and what are you doing in the very depths of the forest where we have never before seen a man?"

"I am only a poor wood-cutter," he replied, "come to get some wood to sell, so as to give my wife and children something to eat and some clothes to wear."

"That is a very stupid thing to do," said one of the girls. "You can't get much money that way. If you will only stop with us we will have your wife and children looked after for you much better than you can do it yourself."