Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/347

 from her husband's relations. And with difficulty did she get outside the town, leaning upon the hand of her daughter, for without her was the darkness of night, and within her the darkness of grief. And as she went along in the thick darkness outside the town, it chanced, so fate would have it, that she ran her shoulder against a thief impaled on a stake, whom she did not see. He was still alive, and his pain being aggravated by the blow he received from her shoulder, he said, " Alas ! who has rubbed salt into my wounds?" The merchant's wife then and there said to him, " Who are you ?" He answered her, " I am a detected thief impaled here,* and though I am impaled, my breath has not yet left my body, wicked man that I am. So tell me, lady, who you are and whither you are going in this manner." When the merchant's wife heard this, she told him her story; and at that moment the eastern quarter adorned her face with the outshining moon, as with a beauty -patch.

Then, all the horizon being lighted up, the thief saw the merchant's daughter, the maiden Dhanavatí, and said to her mother, " Listen to one request of mine; I will give you a thousand pieces of gold; come, give me this maiden daughter of yours to wife," She laughed, and said, " What do you want with her?" Then the thief replied, " I am now as good as dead, and I have no son; and you know, a sonless man does not inherit the worlds of bliss. But, if you agreed to my proposal, whatever son she may give birth to by my appointment, whoever may be his father, will be the issue raised up to me. This is the reason why I ask for her, but do you accomplish that desire of mine." When the merchant's widow heard this, she consented to it out of avarice. And she brought water from somewhere or other, and poured it on the hand of that thief, and said, " I give you this my maiden daughter in marriage."

He then gave to her daughter the command aforesaid, and then said to the merchant's widow, " Go and dig at the foot of this banyan-tree, and take the gold you find there; and when I am dead, have my body burnt with the usual ceremonies, and throw my bones into some sacred water, and go with your daughter to the city of Vakrolaka. There the people are made happy by good government under king Súryaprabha, and you will be able to live as you like, free from anxiety, as you will not be persecuted." When the thief had said this, being thirsty, he drank some water which she brought; and his life came to an end, spent with the torture of impalement.

Then the merchant's widow went and took the gold from the foot of the banyan-tree, and went secretly with her daughter to the house of a friend of her husband's; and while she was there, she managed to get that thief's body duly burnt, and had his bones thrown into a sacred water, and all the