father could not catch him up and so the boy was not killed; then the woman abused her husband and said that he was deceiving her.  So he promised to finish the business the next day and told her to give the boy a good hot breakfast before they started, so that he might receive one last kindness, and he said that they must find some other way of killing him because all the ploughing was finished; but his wife told him he could plough down their crop of goondli, the bullocks would stop to eat the goondli as they went along and so he would easily catch up his son.  Accordingly the next morning father and son took out the ploughs and the boy asked where they should plough, and the father said that they would plough down the field of goondli.  But the boy said “Why should we do that? it is a good crop and will be ripe in a day or two; it is too late to sow again, we shall lose this crop and who knows whether we shall get anything in its place?”

And the father thought ’What the boy says is true; the first crop is like the first child, if I kill him who will support me in my old age?  Who knows whether my second wife will have children.  I will not kill him however angry she be;’ so they unyoked their ploughs and went home.  He told his wife that he would not kill the boy and scolded her and ended by giving her a beating.  Then she ran away in a passion but he did not trouble to go and look for her and in a few days her father and brothers brought her back, and her husband told them what had happened and they also scolded her and told her to mend her ways.

VII.  The Pious Woman.

There was once a very pious woman and her special virtue was that she would not eat or drink on any day until she had first given alms to a beggar.  One day no beggar came to her house, so by noon she got tired of waiting, and, tying in her cloth some parched rice, she went to the place where the women drew water.  When she got there she saw a Jugi coming towards her, she greeted him and said that she had brought dried rice for him.  He said that omens had bidden him come to her and that he came to grant her a boon:  she might ask one favour and it would be given her.  The woman said:  “Grant me this boon—­to know where our souls go after death, and to see at the time of death how they escape, whether through the nose or the mouth, and where they go to; and tell me when I shall die and where my soul will go to; this I ask and no more.”  Then the Jugi answered, “Your prayer is granted, but you must tell no one; if you do, the power will depart from you.”  So saying he took from his bag something like a feather and brushed her eyes with it and washed them with water.  Then the woman’s eyes were opened and she saw spirits—­bongas, bhuts, dains, churins, and the souls of dead men; and the Jugi told her not to be afraid, but not to speak to them lest men should think her mad; then he took his leave,