V.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 591 noonday when no Hindu, however poor, would turn a guest away from his door if he wanted food. Visnu entered the house when the money-lender was negotiating with a customer as to the percent- age of interest on a certain loan. The god applied to him for help saying that his father and mother both old and decrepit, were stricken with hunger, and wanted shelter and food at his house for the day. The Cresthi looked at him, and, without replying,
went on talking on his business, till it was high time for dinner and he rose to leave. Vishnu now again asked him if he could give three persons food and shelter for the day. The Cresthi did not deign to give any reply even to this, but as he passed into the inner appartments, dismissing all his men, he replied briefly saying that it was now high time to worship Civa, before which he never tasted any food,—so it was a sin on his part to detain him by requests of a secular nature. Vishnu came back to Civa and related the story to him and to Durga, and they were both greatly mortified at this conduct of one whom they had believed to be a pious man and their devout follower. Visnu now led them to the western extremity of
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that village; it was afternoon, a dense wood lay রন before them, the trees of which glistened with the wood. light of the western horizen; the champaka and ataci flowers peeped through small vistas, lying hidden in the shade of large acvatha and cimula trees which abounded there. There they espied a small hut, a straw-roofed mud-hovel, very neat and pleasant to look upon, lying in a sort of woody covert,—unwilling as it were from shyness to show itself to men,
