up the
valley, he answered sorrowfully, "Not one, our lord." He had no relative
except an old mother whom he was obliged to support, and who was known
throughout the district in which she lived as the woman with the
bitterest tongue in all the land, and when too sick to move from her
mat, she would yet fill the air with poisoned words.

The king was very pleased with his _amat loeng_ for finding Ai Du Ka Ta,
and gave him a very fine horse as a reward. Then he called his daughter,
took away all her fine clothes and married her to this poorest man in
his realm and drove her out of the palace amid the jeers and taunts of
the very people who, before her disgrace, had waited upon her every word
and had done her bidding while they trembled before her. The king also
took away her old name and commanded that in future she was to be known
as Nang Kam Ung, which means, "The woman whose luck depends upon
herself."

The house, or rather hut, to which Ai Du Ka Ta took his bride was in the
jungle. It was only four bamboo poles stuck in the ground and covered
with dried grass and bushes. Not even a sleeping mat was on the
ground--there was no floor--and the chattie in which he cooked his rice
had a hole in it, and had to be set upon three stones sideways over the
fire with the hole uppermost, to prevent the water leaking and putting
out the fire.

Fortunately the girl's mother had helped her to smuggle out her
"birth-stone," which was a large, valuable ruby, and so she took it off
her finger and gave it to her husband, telling him to go and sell it and
buy clothes and food for both of them.

Ai looked at the stone and said, "Who will give me food and clothes for
a little red stone like that? We have no fools or mad men living near
here who would do such a foolish thing as that," for you must remember
he had lived in the jungle all his life, and had never heard of precious
stones, much less seen one till now.

His friends were just as ignorant of its value as he was. He went from
house to house in the little village near, but all laughed at him till
he became disgusted, threw the stone away in the jungle and came home in
a very ill humor with his wife for leading him such a wild-goose chase,
and making him appear foolish in the eyes of the few people he knew.

His wife was in great distress when she found that he had thrown the
ruby away, and told her husband that if he had gone to the city and
taken it to the jewelers, instead