Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/217

 Rh "Now," said the second bed-leg, "I will go out and eat the air of the king's country. Do you all stand firm while I am away." "Go," the others answered; "we will take care the king does not fall," The second bed-leg then went out, and went to another plain on which stood a very old palace belonging to the king, and the wind told it the palace was so ruinous, that it would fall and kill the king the first time he went into it: the king had never once had it repaired. So it came back and told the three other legs all about the palace and what the wind had said. "If I were the king," said the second bed-leg, "I would have that palace pulled down. It is quite ready to fall; and the first time the king goes into it, it will fall on him and kill him." The king lay and listened to everything. As it happened, he had forgotten all about his old palace, and had not gone near it for a long time.

Then the third bed-leg said, "Now I will go out and see all the fun I can. Stand firm, you three, while I am away." He went to a jungle-plain on which lived a yogí. Now there was a sarai not far off in which lived a woman, the wife of a sepoy, whose husband had gone a year ago to another country, leaving her in the sarai. She was so fond of the yogí, that she used to come and talk to him every night. That very day her husband came back to her, and therefore it was later than usual when she got to the yogí; so he was very vexed with her. "How late you are to-night," he said. "It is not my fault," she answered. "My husband came home to-day after having been away a year, and he kept me." "Which of us do you love best?" asked the yogí; "your husband or me?" "I love you best," said the woman. "Then," said the yogí, "go home and cut off your husband's head, and bring it here for me to see."