eace and quietness,
would fain abdicate in favor of his son.

But Rama will have none of his royalty. Was it for bored kings and
mischief-making mothers-in-law, he asks, speaking with the ante-natal
memories of Vishnu, that he came among the sons of men? Not at all! he
has a mission, and he bides his time. For the present he will take his
wife Seeta, whose will is his, and go out into the wilderness, there to
build him a hut of bamboos and banian-boughs and palmyra-leaves, and
be--Seeta and he--two jolly yogees, that is, religious gypsies,--living
on grass-roots, wild rice, and white ants, and being dirty and devout to
their heart's content.

So they went; and for a little while they enjoyed, undisturbed,
their yogeeish ideas of a good time. But by-and-by tidings came to
Rawunna--the giant with ten heads and twice ten arms, that was King
of Lunka (Ceylon)--of the plots of Mrs. Mithili, the disgust of old
Doosurath, the distraction of the kingdom of Ayodhya, and the whimsical
adventure of Rama and Seeta.

And immediately Rawunna, the giant, is seized in all his heads and arms
with a great longing to know what manner of man this Rama may be, that
he should prefer the yogee's breech-cloth to the royal purple, a hut of
leaves, with only his Seeta, to a harem of a hundred wives, white ants
and paddy to the white camel's flesh and golden partridges of Ayodhya's
imperial repasts. Especially is he curious as to the charms of Seeta, as
to the mighty magic wherewithal she renders monogamy acceptable to an
Ayodhyan prince.

By Indra! he will see for himself! So, pleading exhaustion from the
cares of state, and ten headaches of trouble and dyspepsia, he announces
his intention to make an excursion a few hundred coss into the country
for the benefit of his health; and taking twenty carpet-bags in his
hands, he sets out, in his monstrous way, for Ayodhya, leaving his
kingdom in the care of a blue dwarf with an eye in the back of his neck.

With seven-coss strides he comes to Ayodhya, and straightway finds the
banian hut in the forest, where Rama dwells with Seeta in the devout
dirtiness of their jolly yogeery.

The god has gone abroad in search of a dinner, and is over the hills to
the sandy nullahs, where the white ants are fattest; while that greasy
Joan, Seeta, "doth keel the pot" at home.

Then Rawunna, the giant, assuming the shape of a pilgrim yogee rolling
to the Caves of Ellora,--with Gayntree, the mystical text, on h