nd came back with
their skins as rough as when they went. So then they were given more
oil and some of the household went with them and made them bathe and
oil themselves properly and then brought them to the house and gave
them new clothes and made them a feast of meat and rice. According to
the custom of the country they were made to sit down in order of age
and were helped in that order; when they had all been helped and had
eaten, their sister said to them "Now brothers you come running to
me for food, and yet you sacrificed me in the tank." Then they were
overwhelmed with shame: they looked up at the sky but there was no
escape there; they looked down at the earth; and the earth split open
and they all ran into the chasm. The sister tried to catch the youngest
brother by the hair and pull him out, calling "Come back, brother,
come back brother, you shall carry my baby about for me!" but his
hair came off in her hand and the earth swallowed them all up. Their
sister planted the hair in a corner of the garden and it is said that
from that human hair, _sabai_ grass originated.

XXVI. The Merchant's Son and the Raja's Daughter.

Once a merchant's wife and a Raja's wife were both with child and one
day as they bathed together they fell into conversation, and they
agreed that if they both bore daughters then the girls should be
"flower friends" while if one had a son and one a daughter then the
children should marry: and they committed the agreement to writing. A
month or two later the Raja's wife bore a daughter and the merchant's
wife a son. When the children grew up a bit they were sent to school,
and as they were both very intelligent they soon learnt to read and
write. At the school the boys used to be taught in an upstairs room
and the girls on the ground floor. One day the boy wrote out a copy
of the agreement which their mothers had made and threw It down to
the girl who was below.

She read it and from that day they began to correspond with each other;
love soon followed and they decided to elope. They fixed a day and
they arranged that the boy should wait for the girl under a _turu_
tree outside the town. When the evening came the girl made haste to
cook her parents' supper and then, when they went to bed, she had
as usual to soothe them to sleep by rubbing their limbs; all this
took a long time and the merchant's son soon got tired of waiting,
so he sang to the tree:--

"Be witness be witness