king, who soon found him a wife in one of the most beautiful girls in the kingdom.
Hati Sing's fame rang far and wide throughout the country. One day a band of Kábúlis sought the king's presence, and urged him to fix a wrestling match between them and Hati Sing. On the day appointed for the competition, the Kábúlis appeared before the king, but Hati Sing, knowing that for him to stand before them as an opponent was as foolish as for a blade of grass to rear its head against a hurricane, put off the catastrophe by saying that it was beneath him, as a Hindu, to touch or to be touched by them. But the Kábúlis would not let him escape thus. They urged him to try his strength with them in some other way, and the king told them that he would think over the matter, and let them know his decision on the morrow.
But they were not to see the next day's light. Hati Sing, by means of money and influence, bribed the keeper of the inn in which they slept during the night to hide a venomous snake under their beds. The poor men retired to sleep and their sleep ended in death, caused by the fangs of the destructive reptile. So no more had Hati Sing to fear them. Left undisputed master of the field, he went on practising his deception and amassing wealth, till at length, after the lapse of some years, death carried him off under circumstances that disabused the king and his subjects of the confidence they had so long placed in him. A fruit-seller came to the palace-gate with the choicest mangoes for sale. Hati Sing's mouth watered at the sight of them and he demanded some mangoes as a bribe for the man's admission into the royal presence. But the man would not part with any of his mangoes without receiving their price, and so an altercation took place between him and Hati Sing, in the course of which the latter said, "You fool, you do not know who it is who asks you for a few mangoes. It is the redoubtable Jamadar, Hati Sing." To this the fruit-seller, who had heard neither the name nor the fame of the person bearing it, replied, "I have seen many
