old; but she was not married, for her father and mother had promised that she should not do so until it pleased herself; and although many great rajahs and nobles sought her hand, she constantly refused them all.
Now Sodewa Bai's father, on one of her birthdays, gave her a lovely pair of slippers, made of gold and jewels. Each slipper was worth a hundred thousand gold mohurs.[1] There were none like them in all the earth. Sodewa Bai prized these slippers very much, and always wore them when she went out walking, to protect her tender feet from the stones; but one day, as she was wandering with her ladies upon the side of the mountain on which the palace was built, playing, and picking the wild-flowers, her foot slipped and one of the golden slippers fell down, down, down the steep hill-slope, over rocks and stones, into the jungle below. Sodewa Bai sent attendants to search for it, and the Rajah caused criers to go throughout the town and proclaim that whoever discovered the Princess's slipper should receive a great reward; but though it was hunted for far and near, high and low, it could not be found.
It chanced, however, that not very long after this, a young Prince, the eldest son of a Rajah who lived in the plains, was out hunting, and in the jungle he picked up the very little golden slipper which Sodewa Bai had lost, and which had tumbled all the way from the mountain-side into the depths of the forest. He took it home with him, and showed it to his mother, saying, 'What a fairy foot must have worn this tiny slipper!' 'Ah, my boy,' she said,—'this must in truth have belonged to a lovely Princess; (if she is but as beautiful as her slipper!) would that you could find such a one to be your wife!' Then they sent into all the towns of the kingdom, to inquire for the owner of the lost slipper; but she could not be found. At last, when many months had gone by, it happened that news was brought by travellers to the Rajah's capital of how, in a far-distant land, very high among the mountains, there lived a beautiful Princess who had lost her slipper, and whose father had offered a great reward to whoever should restore it; and from the description they gave, all were assured it was the one that the Prince had found.
Then his mother said to him, 'My son, it is certain that the slipper you found belongs to none other than the great Mountain Rajah's daughter; therefore take it to his palace, and when he
- ↑ £150,000
