from each other, why won’t you tell me this? if you refuse to tell me there is an end of our friendship,” but the Raja’s son persisted that he had been told nothing and proposed that they should go and ask the old woman if it were not so; but the Dewan’s son said that that was no good because the old woman and the Raja’s son had plainly made a plot to keep him in the dark.  The quarrel grew hotter and hotter, till at last they parted in anger and each went to his own home and from that time their friendship was broken off.

And being separated they gave up hunting and took to useful pursuits.  Thus the old woman earned her reward from the Raja.

XLII.  A Story Told by a Hindu.

Once upon a time there was a Raja who had two sons and after their father’s death they divided the kingdom between them.  The two brothers were inveterate gamblers and spent their time playing cards with each other; for a long time fortune was equal, but one day it turned against the elder brother and he lost and lost until his money and his jewelry, his horses and his elephants and every thing that he had, had been won by his younger brother.  Then in desperation he staked his share in the kingdom and that too he lost.

Then the younger brother sent drummers through the city to proclaim that the whole kingdom was his; the shame of this was more than the elder prince could bear, so he resolved to quit the country and he told his wife of his intention and bade her stay behind.  But his faithful wife refused to be parted from him; she vowed that he had married her not for one day nor for two but for good and all, and that where he went, there she would go, and whatever troubles he met, she would share.  So he allowed her to come with him and the two set off to foreign parts.  After sometime their path led them through an extensive jungle and after travelling through it for two days they at last lost their way completely; their food gave out, they were faint with starvation and torn with briars.

The prince urged his wife to return but she would not hear of it, so they pushed on, supporting life on jungle fruits; sometimes the prince would go far ahead, for his faithful wife could only travel slowly, and then he would return and wait for her; at last he got tired of leading her on and made up his mind to abandon her.  At night they lay down at the foot of a tree and the prince thought “If wild animals would come and eat us it would be the best that could happen.  I cannot bear to see my wife suffer any more; although her flesh is torn with thorns, she will not leave me.  I will leave her here; may wild beasts kill both her and me, but I cannot see her die before my eyes.”  So thinking he got up quietly and went off as quickly as he could.

When the princess woke and found that she had been abandoned, she began to weep and wept from dawn to noon without ceasing; at noon a being, in the guise of an old woman appeared and asked her why she wept, and comforted her and promised to lead her out of the wood and told her that Chando had had compassion on her and would allow her to find her husband again if they both lived.