When the party returned home, the Rajah's brother said to him: "Where did you get these magnificent presents?" He replied: "They are gifts from my father- and mother-in-law." At this news the Rajah's brother went home to his wife very discontented, and asked her why she had never told him of her parents, and taken him to see them, whereby he might have received rich gifts as well as his brother. His wife then went to her sister, and asked how she had managed to get all the things. But the Ranee said: "Go away, you wicked woman, I will not speak to you. You killed the poor dog, our mother."
But afterwards she told her all about it.
The sister then said: "I shall go and see the cobra, and get presents too." The Ranee then answered: "You can go if you like."
So the sister ordered her palanquin, and told her husband she was going to see her parents, and prepare them for a visit from him. When she reached the ants' nest she saw the cobra there, and she went and put her finger in his mouth, and the cobra bit her, and she died.
The Magic Ring
ONCE upon a time there lived an old couple who had one son called Martin. Now, when the old man's time had come he stretched himself out on his bed and died. Though all his life long he had toiled and moiled, he only left his widow and son two hundred florins. The old woman determined to put by the money for a rainy day, but, alas! the rainy day was close at hand, for their meal was all consumed, and who is prepared to face starvation with two hundred florins at their disposal? So the old woman counted out one hundred florins, and giving them to Martin, told him to go into the town and lay in a store of meal for a year.
So Martin started off for the town. When he reached the meat market he found the whole place in turmoil and a great noise of angry voices and barking of dogs. Mixing in the crowd, he noticed a stag hound which the butchers had caught and tied to a post, and which was being flogged in a merciless manner. Overcome with pity, Martin spoke to the butchers, saying:
"Friends, why are you beating the poor dog so cruelly?"