“I am not sure” answered the other, “but I have something tied up in my cloth,” and he untied the three knots and found in them a clod of earth, a potsherd and a piece of charcoal.  He threw them away and went back to the snake maiden, and asked why she had put worthless rubbish in his cloth.  “You had no faith” said she “if you had believed, the animals would not have turned into the clod and the potsherd and the charcoal.”  So they journeyed on, till they came to the second Gosain, and he also asked to see the golden animals and this time the Raja’s son set his mind hard to believe and, when he untied the knots, there were a golden leopard and a golden snake and a golden monkey.  Then they went on and showed the animals to the first Gosain, and then went to the house where his mother lived.

When the appointed day came, the Raja’s son sent word to his father to have a number of booths and shelters erected in a spacious plain, and to have a covered way made from his mother’s house to the plain, and then he would show the dancing animals.  So the Raja gave the necessary orders, and on the day fixed all the people assembled to see the fun.  Then the Raja’s son set the three animals on the ground and his wife remained hidden in the covered way and caused the animals to dance.  The people stayed watching all day till evening and then dispersed, That night all the booths and shelters which had been erected were changed into houses of gold; and when he saw this, the Raja left his younger wife and her children and went and lived with his first wife.

LXVII.  The Mongoose Boy.

Once upon a time there was a Raja who had two wives.  By his first wife he had six sons, but the second wife bore only one son and he was born as a mongoose.  When the six sons of the elder wife grew up, they used to jeer at their mongoose brother and his mother, so the Raja sent his second wife to live in a separate house.  The Mongoose boy could talk like any man but he never grew bigger than an ordinary mongoose and his name was Lelsing.

One day the Raja called all his sons to him and said that he wished, before he died, to divide his property among them.  But the sons said that they had rather he did not do so then; they wished to go abroad and see the world, and if he would give each of them some capital to start, with, they would go abroad and trade and even if they did not make much profit they would have the advantage of seeing the world.

So the Raja gave his six sons twenty rupees each to start business with; but when Lelsing also asked for some money, his brothers jeered at him and declared that he certainly could not go with them, for he would only get eaten up by some dog.  Lelsing made no answer at the time but afterwards he went to his father alone and begged again for some money.  At last the Raja, though he scarcely believed that Lelsing would really go out trading, gave him ten rupees.