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 mother should hear him; and in the night you must either kill him, or else take him away, so that his mother may never see him. If you obey our orders, we will give you a great many rupees." All this they did out of spite. The nurse took the little child and put him into a box, and the four Queens went back to the gardener's daughter.

First they put a stone into her boy's little bed, and then they took the handkerchief off her eyes and showed it her, saying, "Look! this is your son!" The poor girl cried bitterly, and thought, "What will the King say when he finds no child?" But she could do nothing.

When the King came home, he was furious at hearing his youngest wife, the gardener's daughter, had given him a stone instead of the beautiful little son she had promised him. He made her one of the palace servants, and never spoke to her.

In the middle of the night the nurse took the box in which was the beautiful little prince, and went out to a broad plain in the jungle. There she dug a hole, made the fastenings of the box sure, and put the box into the hole, although the child in it was still alive. The King's dog, whose name was Shankar, had followed her to see what she did with the box. As soon as she had gone back to the four Queens (who gave her a great many rupees), the dog went to the hole in which she had put the box, took the box out, and opened it. When he saw the beautiful little boy, he was very much delighted and said, "If it pleases Khuda that this child should live, I will not hurt him; I will not eat him, but I will swallow him whole and hide him in my stomach." This he did.

After six months had passed, the dog went by night to the jungle, and thought, "I wonder whether the boy is alive or