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 The Soothsayer's Son

SOOTHSAYER when on his deathbed wrote out the horoscope of his second son, whose name was Gangazara, and bequeathed it to him as his only property, leaving the whole of his estate to his eldest son. The second son thought over the horoscope, and said to himself:

"Alas! am I born to this only in the world? The sayings of my father never failed. I have seen them prove true to the last word while he was living; and how has he fixed my horoscope! 'From my birth poverty!' Nor is that my only fate. 'For ten years, imprisonment'—a fate harder than poverty; and what comes next? 'Death on the sea-shore'; which means that I must die away from home, far from friends and relatives on a sea-coast. Now comes the most curious part of the horoscope, that I am to 'have some happiness afterwards!' What this happiness is, is an enigma to me."

Thus thought he, and after all the funeral obsequies of his father were over, took leave of his elder brother, and started for Benares. He went by the middle of the Deccan,