there was a fair held near the palace and its inmates went there, leaving her behind. She being alone and thus free to act as she liked, emerged from her wooden frame, which as the reader may by this time have guessed, had been assumed by her as a disguise, and went to the roof of the palace to take the evening air, not suspecting that any one would intrude. But she was wrong in her calculations, for the prince returning to the house on some urgent business, knocked at the gate. She hastily resumed her wooden frame and opened the door to him, whereupon he at once asked who the lady of unrivalled beauty on the roof was. She said she was ignorant of any lady being in the house, and though the prince remained silent, the vivid impression made upon him by the extraordinary manifestation of beauty his eyes had seen could not be effaced from his mind. There was hardly a moment when he did not think of her who had captivated his heart, and he greatly longed to see her again. But his longing was vain, for the time being at least, and he gradually pined away. Great mental anguish produced bodily distempers, and the healthy and vigorous young man was turned into a skeleton. He lost his appetite and the power of digestion and was forced to take to his bed. Nobody knew the cause of his complaint except Kátmánúsh, who kept the secret from them all. At length all hope of the prince's life was given up and a message was sent to his sister, living in her father-in-law's house, that she must visit her brother at once, if she wished to see him alive.
What sister can remain away from the bed-side of a brother in such a plight? The princess without a moment's delay started for her father's palace. But the journey was too long to be accomplished in one day, so she was compelled to halt by the way to spend the night. Near the inn where she stopped, there was a temple of Shiva, and she fell prostrate before the god to supplicate him for the recovery of her brother. Thereupon the god revealed to her, that the prince was certain to get well if she who was named Kátmánúsh
