him meals, sat down themselves for their dinner after him.
The king of that country who was always thinking of his highly bought hen, soon as he had some leisure, ordered the fowlers to bring her to him ; and when they went for her they found in that place a hole. Their confusion may be more imagined than described. So flying back in anguish they reported the strange phenomena of a hole in the place of a hen that they safely secured in an iron basket over which they had put a heavy weight.
The king was extremely vexed at the mystery of the disappearance of his hen. "Can a bandicoote ever kill a hen and eat her up. May kill perhaps ! Let us now examine the hole and its winding, and dragging it out kill it.” So thinking he ordered his men to bring him at least the murderer of his hen—the bandicoote. Pickaxes, spades, hoes and crowbars were freely administered to all the windings of the hole of the bandicoote till more than half the palace was ploughed down. All the search, of course, proved vain, and the king doubly mortified, sanctioned at once new estimates for the repair of his mansion.
Let us turn to the prince. He lived in peace outside the town with his parents, who took great care of bim till every pie of the hundred pagodas was spent. When that sum was exhausted they informed their son of it, who now devising within
