slowly round
and round on the edge of the current, would come circling back on an
eddy to the hermit's feet. At other times both leaves were held in the
backward eddy, and failed to reach the main current of the noisy
stream.

'What are you doing?' asked the king at last, and the hermit replied
that he was reading the fates of men; every one's fate, he said, was
settled from the beginning, and, whatever it were, there was no escape
from it. The king laughed.

'I care little,' he said, 'what my fate may be; but I should be
curious to know the fate of my little daughter.'

'I cannot say,' answered the hermit.

'Do you not know, then?' demanded the king.

'I might know,' returned the hermit, 'but it is not always wisdom to
know much.'

But the king was not content with this reply, and began to press the
old man to say what he knew, which for a long time he would not do. At
last, however, the king urged him so greatly that he said:

'The king's daughter will marry the son of a poor slave-girl called
Puruna, who belongs to the king of the land of the north. There is no
escaping from Fate.'

The king was wild with anger at hearing these words, but he was also
very tired; so he only laughed, and answered that he hoped there would
be a way out of _that_ fate anyhow. Then he asked if the hermit could
shelter him and his beasts for the night, and the hermit said 'Yes';
so, very soon the king had watered and tethered his horse, and, after
a supper of bread and parched peas, lay down in the cave, with the
hound at his feet, and tried to go to sleep. But instead of sleeping
he only lay awake and thought of the hermit's prophecy; and the more
he thought of it the angrier he felt, until he gnashed his teeth and
declared that it should never, never come true.

Morning came, and the king got up, pale and sulky, and, after learning
from the hermit which path to take, was soon mounted and found his way
home without much difficulty. Directly he reached his palace he wrote
a letter to the king of the land of the north, begging him, as a
favour, to sell him his slave girl Puruna and her son, and saying
that, if he consented, he would send a messenger to receive them at
the river which divided the kingdoms.

For five days he awaited the reply, and hardly slept or ate, but was
as cross as could be all the time. On the fifth day his messenger
returned with a letter to say that the king of the land of the north
would not sell, but