frequented palaces, thronged marts and ports, in search of a buyer. But no success attended his endeavours, and so his travels continued.
In the meantime, his wife was very uneasy at his absence. One day she started with the object of tracking him, and searched the whole of the district in which she lived, ultimately reaching Shakti's hut. Struck by her splendid appearance, she bowed down in reverence. But her feelings underwent a sudden change when she discovered the marks of her husband's hands on the mud plaster on the bamboo fencing of the hut. She suspected that the girl before her was his mistress. His late absent-mindedness and hurry to leave home confirmed her suspicions, and she poured forth on her suspected rival a torrent of abuses. She noticed, too, that the girl before her was about to become a mother, and attributed it to her liaison with the wood-cutter.
Seized with jealousy, the wood-cutter's wife went to a place at some distance, where her friend, a witch, lived, her employment being that of a midwife. Her object was to commend the services of the latter to Shakti, so that she might destroy by charms the infant about to be born. They both came to the hut and saw in it a new-born babe of unrivalled beauty lying on its mother's bosom, and in the courtyard heaps of gold mohurs. Seizing these and the child, they left the spot with the greatest possible speed. The mother, who had been in a swoon, suddenly awoke, and not finding her child, ran like a maddened tigress in search of it, bewailing her lot thus, "O Bidhi, what have I done to offend thee? I never snatched away a child from its mother's bosom or a calf from the cow that suckled it. I never went so far as to separate a fruit from its tree, or to plunder a bird's nest of its offspring."
Nature sympathized with her; the earth shook, stars fell down from the firmament, and the beasts ran before her as if to help her find out the missing child. She at last reached the seashore and fell down faint, exclaiming, "O gods! for
