laughed for such a long time, what amuses you so much now?' He answered, 'I am laughing to see Koila and his wife Chandra Ranee journeying towards the Madura Tinivelly country. He is going to sell his wife's bangle, and he will only be killed, and then she in anger will burn up all the country. O foolish people!' The goddesses answered, 'This is a very dreadful thing; let us go in disguise, and warn him not to enter the country.'—'It would be useless,' said Krishnaswami; 'if you do, he will only laugh at you and get angry with you.' But the goddesses determined to do their best to avert the threatened calamity. So they disguised themselves as old fortune-tellers, and went out with little lamps and their sacred books, to meet Koila as he came along the road followed by his wife. Then they said to him, 'Come not into the Madura Tinivelly country, for if you come you will be killed, and your wife in her fury will burn all the land with fire.' At first, Koila would not listen to them; then he bade them go away; and lastly, when they continued warning him, got angry, and beat them out of his path, saying, 'Do you think I am to be frightened out of the country by a parcel of old crones like you?'
Then Krishnaswami's three wives returned to him, much enraged at the treatment they had received, but he only said to them, 'Did not I tell you not to go, warning you that it would be useless?'
On getting near the Rajah's capital, Koila and Chandra came to the house of an old milk-seller, who was very kind to them, and gave them food and shelter for the night. Next morning Koila said to his wife, 'You had better stay here; this good old woman will take care of you, while I go into the town to sell your bangle.' Chandra agreed, and remained at the old woman's house while her husband went into the town. Of course he did not know that the Rajah and his wife (the Coplinghee Ranee) were Chandra's father and mother, any more than they, or Chandra herself, knew it, or than the three Mango children knew the story of their mothers' journey in search of Mahadeo.
Now a short time before Koila and Chandra reached the Madura Tinivelly country, Coplinghee Ranee had sent a very handsome pair of bangles to a Jeweller in the town to be cleaned. It chanced that in a high tree close to the Jeweller's house two eagles had built their nest, and the young eagles, who were very noisy birds, used to scream all day long, and greatly disturb the Jeweller's family. So one day when the old birds were away, the
