ckens. Just come and see." The Raja went, and
when he saw the blood on his wife's mouth he was frightened, and he
thought she was really a Rakshas. The shoemaker's wife said to him,
"If you do not cut this woman in pieces, some harm will happen to
you." So the Raja took a knife and cut his beautiful wife into pieces.
He then went away very sorrowful. The Phulmati Rani's arms and legs
grew into four houses; her chest became a tank, and her head a house
in the middle of the tank; her eyes turned into two little doves; and
these five houses, the tank and the doves, were transported to the
jungle. No one knew this. The little doves lived in the house that
stood in the middle of the tank. The other four houses stood round the
tank.

One day when the Indrasan Raja was hunting by himself in the jungle he
was very tired, and he saw the house in the tank. So he said, "I will
go into that house to rest a little while, and to-morrow I will return
home to my father." So, tying his horse outside, he went into the
house and lay down to sleep. By and by, the two little birds came and
perched on the roof above his head. They began to talk, and the Raja
listened. The little husband-dove said to his wife, "This is the man
who cut his wife to pieces." And then he told her how the Indrasan
Raja had married the beautiful Phulmati Rani, who weighed only one
flower, and how the shoemaker's wife had drowned her; how God had
brought her to life again; how the shoemaker's wife had burned her;
and last of all, how the Raja himself had cut her to pieces. "And
cannot the Raja find her again?" said the little wife-dove. "Oh, yes,
he can," said her husband, "but he does not know how to do so." "But
do tell me how he can find her," said the little wife-dove. "Well,"
said her husband, "every night, at twelve o'clock, the Rani and her
servants come to bathe in the tank. Her servants wear yellow dresses,
but she wears a red one. Now, if the Raja could get all their dresses,
every one, when they lay them down and go into the tank to bathe, and
throw away all the yellow dresses one by one, keeping only the red
one, he would recover his wife."

The Raja heard all these things, and at midnight the Rani and her
servants came to bathe. The Raja lay very quiet, and after they all
had taken off their dresses and gone into the tank, he jumped up and
seized every one of the dresses,--he did not leave one of them,--and
ran away as hard as he could. Then each of t