So the cat ran after the women and when they began to cut up the fish, it kept mewing round them.  They threw one or two scraps to it, but it only sniffed at them and would not eat them; then they began to wonder what on earth the cat wanted, and at last they threw the stomach to it.  This it seized on gladly and carried it off and tore it open and found the ring and ran off with it to where the otter and the rat were waiting.  Then the three friends travelled hard for a day and a night and reached the prison in which Lita was confined.

When Lita got the ring he begged his jailer to get him a seer of milk and when it was brought he dropped the ring in it, and said “I wish the bed on which my faithless wife and her lover are sleeping to be brought here with them in it this very night” and before morning the bed was brought to the prison.  Then the magistrate was called and when he saw that the wife was alive he released Lita, and the lover who had run away with her had to pay Lita double the expenditure which had been incurred on his marriage, and was fined beside.

But Lita married another wife and lived happily with her.  And some time afterwards he called the otter and the cat and the rat to him and said that he purposed to let them go and before they parted he would give them anything they wished for.  They said that he owed them nothing, and they made Lita promise to let them know if ever he lost the ring or fell into trouble, and he promised to help them if ever their lives were in danger, and one morning he took them to a bazar, near which was a tank full of fish, and he turned the otter into the tank and left the cat and the rat to support themselves in the bazar.  The next day he went to see them and the otter came out of the tank and gave him a fish which it had caught, and the cat brought him some milk it had stolen, and that was the last he saw of them.

XXIII.  The Boy Who Found His Father.

There was once a boy who used always to cheat when playing Kati (pitch and toss) and for this the village boys with whom he played used to quarrel with him, saying “Fatherless orphan, why do you cheat?” So one day he asked his mother why they called him that name and whether his father was really dead.  “He is alive” said she “but a long time ago a rhinoceros carried him off on its horn.”  Then the boy vowed that he would go in search of his father and made his mother put him up provisions for the journey; and he started off taking with him an iron bow and a big bundle of arrows.

He journeyed on all day and at nightfall he came to a village; there he went up to the house of an old woman to ask for a bed.  He stood at the threshhold and called out to her “Grannie, grannie, open the door.”  “I have no son, and no grandchildren to call me grannie,” grumbled the old woman and went to open the door to see who was there, and when she opened the door and saw him, she