But Manoo bade him be patient and silent yet awhile. Then he turned to the Nāt, and asked him what he thought. The Nāt, who was laughing inwardly, at once replied that he could perform the task that the woodcutter deemed impossible. The judge smiled a little complacently as he bade him do it.
The Nāt immediately went to and fro through the hole with the greatest ease, the woman looking on in speechless amaze.
Then said Manoo—
"I suspected yesterday that you were no mortal, but a visitor from the Nāt country, and now I am, of course, convinced of it."
The Nāt hung his head, and the judge proceeded, saying—
"Why have you come from your own world, taking upon yourself this form and shape, thereby causing so much pain and unhappiness to two innocent people?"
The Nāt, seeing that he could no longer carry on his course of deception, answered—
"In the season of the sun, and in that of the rain, for a greater time than I can count, I have lived in a tree in the forest, where this woodman comes every day. I troubled no one, and I was content till two days ago, when he felled my home to the ground with neither warning given to or permission asked of me. When other woodcutters have come, they have and do always crave permission of the Nāt residing in the tree to take from it even one branch. Therefore you must see that I have had just cause to be angry."
Manoo then said that the woodman had certainly been wrong in the way he had acted. Then, turning to the woman, he directed her and her husband to hang up a dried cocoa-nut on the best side of their hut for the Nāt to make his home in—an order which they promised to speedily obey.
The Nāt said that he was satisfied with that arrangement.