tender, softened expression she could hardly believe that he was dead.
He was, in truth, very beautiful; and, watching him, she said to
herself, "Alas, what a noble being is here lost to the world! what an
earth's joy is extinguished! Was it for this I was cold, and proud,
and stern--to break the cup of my own happiness and to be the death of
such as you? Must you now never know that you won your wife? Must you
never hear her ask your pardon for the past, nor know her cruel
punishment? Ah, if you had but lived, how dearly I would have loved
you! Oh, my husband! my husband!" And sinking down on the ground, she
buried her face in her hands and cried bitterly.

While she was sitting thus, night closed over the jungle, and brought
with it wild beasts that had left their dens and lairs in search of
prey--to roam about, as the heat of the day was over. Tigers, lions,
elephants, and bison, all came by turns, crushing through the
underwood which surrounded the place where the palkees were, but they
did no harm to Panch-Phul Ranee, for she was so fair that not even the
cruel beasts of the forests would injure her. At last, about four
o'clock in the morning, all the wild animals had gone except two
little jackals, who had been very busy watching the rest and picking
the bones left by the tigers. Tired with running about, they lay down
to rest close to the palkees. Then one little jackal said to the
other, who was her husband, "Do tell me a little story." "Dear me!"
exclaimed he, "what people you women are for stories! Well, look just
in front of you; do you see those two?" "Yes," she answered; "what of
them?" "That woman you see sitting on the ground," he said, "is the
Panch-Phul Ranee." "And what son of a Rajah is the man in the palkee?"
asked she. "That," he replied, "is a very sorrowful son. His father
was so unkind to him that he left his own home, and went to live in
another country very far from this; and there he dreamed about the
Panch-Phul Ranee, and came to our land in order to marry her, but he
was killed in jumping the seventh hedge of spears, and all he gained
was to die for her sake."

"That is very sad," said the first little jackal; "but could he never
by any chance come to life again?" "Yes," answered the other; "maybe
he could, if only someone knew how to apply the proper remedies."
"What are the proper remedies, and how could he be cured?" asked the
lady jackal. (Now, all this conversation had been heard by P