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154 here to enjoy all this good fortune with me!" said he to himself at length. So he wished for the mouse, the ape and the bear, and instantly they stood before him.

And now Shrikantha lived in luxury and happiness for some time, and it seemed as if he might continue to live so until the end of his days. But Fate planned otherwise. There came to the palace one day a caravan of wicked, thieving merchants, and the chief among them made friends with Shrikantha and in an evil moment persuaded him to tell the secret of his good fortune.

"Alas!" said the merchant, when Shrikantha had told him all and shown him the precious blue talisman. "How lucky some men are, how unlucky others! Here are you, scarcely more than a lad; you have never worked or traded or done anything whereby a man earns wealth, and yet you are loaded with every blessing, while I, who have toiled hard and honestly my whole life through, have nothing—