Three or four days after this, she found she had nearly reached the other side of the jungle. The wood was not so thick, and in the distance she saw a large building that looked like a great tomb. The Princess determined to go and see what it was, and whether she could find any one there to give her any food, for she had eaten all the rice and felt very hungry, and it was getting towards night.
Now the place towards which the Princess went was the tomb of the Chundun Rajah, but this she did not know.
Chundun Rajah had died many months before, and his father and mother and sisters, who loved him very dearly, could not bear the idea of his being buried under the cold ground; so they had built a beautiful tomb, and inside it they had placed the body on a bed under a canopy, and it had never decayed, but continued as fair and perfect as when first put there. Every day Chundun Rajah's mother and sisters would come to the place to weep and lament from sunrise to sunset; but each evening they returned to their own homes. Hard by was a shrine and small hut where a Brahman lived, who had charge of the place; and from far and near people used to come to visit the tomb of their lost Rajah, and see the great miracle, how the body of him who had been dead so many months remained perfect and undecayed; but none knew why this was. When the Princess got near the place a violent storm came on. The rain beat upon her and wetted her, and it grew so dark she could hardly see where she was going. She would have been afraid to go into the tomb had she known about Chundun Rajah; but, as it was, the storm being so violent and night approaching, she ran in there for shelter as fast as she could, and sat down shivering in one corner. By the light of an oil lamp that burnt dimly in a niche in the wall, she saw in front of her the body of the Rajah lying under the canopy, with the heavy jewelled coverlet over him, and the rich hangings all round. He looked as if he were only asleep, and she did not feel frightened. But at twelve o'clock, to her great surprise, as she was watching and waiting, the Rajah came to life; and when he saw her sitting shivering in the corner, he fetched a light and came towards her and said, 'Who are you?' She answered, 'I am a poor lonely girl. I only came here for shelter from the storm. I am dying of cold and hunger.' And then she told him all her story—how that her sisters-in-law had falsely accused her, and driven her from among them into the jungle, bidding her see their
