that some one should have come for her that she at once answered,
"He is my mother's brother." Her father-in-law believed her and sent
her off in the care of Nagoba, the snake-king. Still disguised as a
Brahman, he took her to the entrance of his underground palace and
there he told her who he was. He then reassumed his true appearance,
and, expanding the mighty hood behind his head, he seated the little
girl on it and took her down to his splendid dwelling-house beneath
the earth. In the central hall he presented her to the snake-queen
and to all the snake-princes, and told them that in no circumstances
whatever were they to bite the little daughter-in-law.

One day the snake-queen was about to be confined. So she asked
the little daughter-in-law to sit by her side with the lamp in
her hand. The little daughter-in-law did so, and a little time
afterwards the snake-queen gave birth to a fresh litter of little
snake-princes. When the little daughter-in-law saw them all wriggling
about, she was frightened out of her wits. She let the lamp slip
out of her hands. It fell on the ground and burnt all the little
snakes' tails off. The snake-queen did her best to comfort them,
but the stumps of the little princes' tails ached so dreadfully that
it was ever so long before the snake-queen could put them off to
sleep. When the snake-king came home that evening, she told him what
had happened. And she was so cross with the little daughter-in-law,
that the snake-king had to promise that she should go back to her
father-in-law's house. A few days later, the snake-king assumed once
again the guise of a Brahman, and, loading the little daughter-in-law
with presents, took her back to her husband's home. In the course of
time the little snake-princes grew up, but their tails never grew
again. So their father, the snake-king, called one little prince,
No-tail; and the second little prince, Cut-tail; and the third little
prince, Dock-tail. And one day they asked the snake-queen how it was
that their tails had been broken off. She told them how the little
daughter-in-law had burnt them off by dropping the lamp on them.

The snake-princes, when they heard their mother's answer, were
terribly cross with the little daughter-in-law, and they vowed that
they would be revenged on her. So they found out where she lived,
and they sent a message to her house, saying that they were coming to
pay her a visit. But they really meant to bite her to de