Presently the Raja came in and asked what was the matter; she turned and scolded him saying:  “You have reared the accursed cat and it has scratched me finely; look, it has taken all the skin off; this is the way the boy repays me for all my trouble.  I will not stay with you; if I stay the boy will injure me like this again.”  The Raja said, “Don’t cry like a baby; how can a simple child like that know better? when he grows up I will scold him.”  But the woman persisted and declared that she would go away with her own child unless the Raja promised to kill his elder son.  The Raja refused to do this, so the Rani took up her baby and went out of the house with it in a rage.  Now the Raja was deeply in love with her and he followed and stopped her, and said that he could not let her take away his younger child; she answered, “Why trouble about the child? it is mine; I have left you your boy, if you don’t kill him, when he grows up, he will tell you some lie about me and make you have me beaten to death.”  At last the Raja said “Well, come back and if the boy does you any harm I will kill him.”  But the Rani said.  “Either kill him now or let me go.”  So at last the Raja promised and brought her back to the palace.  Then the Raja called the boy and gave him his dinner and told him that they were going on a visit to his uncle’s:  and the child was delighted and fetched his shoes and umbrella, and off they set, and a dog came running after them.  When they came to a jungle the Raja told his son to sit under a tree and wait for him, and he went away and killed the dog that had followed them and smeared the blood on his axe and went home, leaving the child.

When his father did not return, the child began to cry, and Thakur heard him and came down, and to frighten the boy and make him leave the jungle he came in the guise of a leopard; but the child would not move from where he was; then Thakur appeared as a bear, and as a snake and an elephant and in many other forms but the child would not move; so at last Thakur took the form of an old woman, who lifted him in her arms and soothed him and carried him to the edge of the jungle and left him on the outskirts of a village.

In the morning a rich Brahman found him and took him home, and as no one claimed the child he brought him up and made him his goat-herd, and they gave him the name of Lela.  The Brahman’s sons and daughters used to go school, and before he took his goats out to graze Lela used to carry their books to the school.  And going to the school every day Lela got to know one or two letters and used to draw them in the sand while minding his goats; later he got the children to give him an old book saying that he wanted to pretend to the other boys that he could read and out of this book he taught himself to read:  and as he grew up he became quite a scholar.  One day he picked up a letter and found that it was from one of the village girls arranging to elope that very evening