by the thought of her separation from her son. The next day she sold the mánik, as Náráyan had directed, for the Being who had spoken to her was no other than the god himself. She then proceeded to worship Lakshmi. Afterwards, she devoted herself to works of charity. She built innumerable houses near her own mansion, and had them filled with suitable people invited from every quarter. The king became her friend, and on his suggestion she did numberless acts of public usefulness, such as the establishment of schools, hospitals, houses for the poor, great marts for trade, and other things of the same kind. The excavation of large tanks was one of her favourite projects, to carry out which she had to employ a great army of labourers, whom she paid daily in cowries.
Leaving her to use her wealth in this laudable manner, let us for a moment direct the reader's attention to what was going on in the house she had left. For some time after his mother's departure, her son, with his wife, lived as comfortably as before. But their happiness was of short duration. The house soon began to look gloomy and deserted, their money seemed to evaporate, and the servants, one by one, left the house. Finally a gang of incendiaries set fire to it one night, and plundered it wholesale. On the following morning the Brahmini's son, having no means of subsistence, took his wife to his father-in-law's and left her there while he went in search of work. But what work could he do? Ignorant of letters, he could aspire to no work except manual labour and that of the meanest kind. But even here the stars seemed to be against him, for everywhere he applied, he was rudely driven away. At length, emaciated and in great misery, he chanced on the place where his mother lived, and hired himself as a day labourer, not knowing in whose service he was employed.
The mother who had expected the ruin of her son, and like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, anxiously looked forward to his return to her, used every morning personally to watch strangers who sought service at the tanks from one of the
