Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/219

 Rh The king sent men to the old palace to pull it down. They found it was just going to fall, and would have fallen on any one who had entered it and crushed him. So the second bed-leg had told the truth.

When the king was sitting in his court-house he heard how during the night thieves had gone into the sarai and killed a sepoy there and cut off his head. Then he sent for the sepoy's wife and asked her who had killed her husband. "Thieves," she said. The king was very angry, for he was sure the third bed-leg had told the truth as the other three legs had done. So he ordered the man to be buried; and bade his servants make a great wooden pile on the plain, and take the woman and burn her on it. They were not to leave her as long as she was alive, but to wait till she was dead.

He next sent for the grain merchant's son, and said to him, "Had it not been for your bed, I should this morning have been bitten by a snake; and, perhaps, killed by my old palace falling on me, as I did not know it was ready to fall, and so might have gone into it. My daughter would certainly have been stolen from me; and a wicked woman been still alive. So now, to-morrow, bring as many carts as you like, and I will give you as a present as many rupees as you can take away on them in half a day."

Early the next morning the merchant's son brought his carts and took away on them as many rupees as he could in half a day. His wife was delighted when she saw the money and said, "My husband only worked for one week, and yet he earned all these rupees!" And they lived always happily.

Told by Múniyá, February 23rd, 1879.