In due time two marriages come to pass; the father, according to agreement, espouses the long foot, and the son takes to wife the short foot. And after the usual interval, the elder white outcaste, who had married the daughter, rejoices at the birth of a boy, and the younger white outcaste, who had married the mother, is gladdened by the sight of a girl.
Now then, by my feet and your head, O warrior king Vikram, answer me one question. What relationship will there be between the children of the two white Pariahs?
Vikram’s brow waxed black as a charcoal-burner’s, when he again heard the most irreverent oath ever proposed to mortal king. The question presently attracted his attention, and he turned over the Baital’s words in his head, confusing the ties of filiality, brotherhood, and relationship, and connection in general.
‘Hem!’ said the warrior king, at last perplexed, and remembering, in his perplexity, that he had better hold his tongue—‘ahem!’
‘I think your majesty spoke?’ asked the Vampire, in an inquisitive and insinuating tone of voice.
‘Hem!’ ejaculated the monarch.
The Baital held his peace for a few minutes, coughing once or twice impatiently. He suspected that the extraordinary nature of this last tale, combined with the use of the future tense, had given rise to a taciturnity so unexpected in the warrior king. He therefore asked if Vikram the Brave would not like to hear another little anecdote.
This time the king did not even say ‘hem!’ Having walked at an unusually rapid pace, he distinguished at a distance the fire kindled by the devotee, and he hurried towards it with an effort which left him no breath wherewith to speak, even had he been so inclined.
‘Since your majesty is so completely dumbfoundered by it, perhaps this acute young prince may be able to answer my question?’ insinuated the Baital, after a few minutes of anxious suspense.