laid a heap of your cakes before me." The wife was thunderstruck. She was at a loss to conjecture how her husband had come to know of the preparation of cakes, and asked him to enlighten her. The request was just the one he had expected, and with gravity he rejoined that he had read astrology and could tell everything that had happened in the wide world. His wife credited what she heard, and ran to the neighbours with the glad tidings. They visited him, and found him with heaps of books beside him. His fame quickly spread all through the country.
Visitors came in crowds, some to show their palms, others to consult him about the thefts committed in their houses; and the answers he gave always satisfied them. One day a Dhobi (washerman), Moti by name, who had lost his donkey, visited him with the object of learning what had become of it. The Brahmin was in a difficulty, but by no means at the end of his wits. He told the Dhobi to wait until his morning devotions were over; and then, entering the inner apartment, went out by the back door to see if he could find the donkey grazing in one of the neighbouring fields. But he failed. He was not, however, altogether nonplussed, and coming to the Dhobi he said, "You won't find your donkey to-day. You must wait till to-morrow. My tutelary goddess, Chundi, is in a bad humour to-day, and will not favour me." Moti went away satisfied, but the Brahmin passed a very disturbed night in fear lest he should lose his credit and reputation. Towards dawn, however, he heard a noise in the courtyard, and suspecting that it was a thief he held up the light in his hand, when to his joy he beheld the lost donkey lying stretched at full length on the ground. With a trick he made the animal stand up, and tied it to a pole. The next morning the Dhobi came and took away his donkey, wondering with the whole neighbourhood at the superhuman powers of the Brahmin.
Some time after this the king's daughter lost her diamond necklace, worth a million gold mohurs. Many astrologers
