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MAY, 1889.]
FOLKLORE IN WESTERN INDIA.
into the very house in which he now remembered he had gone through that most important ceremony of his life-his marriage.
Could it be possible, then, he thought, that it was only his wife-the girl he had so long discarded, that had so long and so successfully played upon his feelings, and had made herself. so agreeable not only to himself, but to all others with whom she came into contact! What enraged him most was that she should have spent so many days in the company of young men like her cousins. Jealousy and hatred instantly took the place of love in his heart, and be entered the house, swearing vengeance on his innocent wife! His old father-in-law welcomed him into the house with unmixed delight, but the son-in-law resented his kind treatment, and peremptorily demanded to be shown into his wife's presence.
Now it may be mentioned here that the old man and his daughter had been looking forward to this visit of the bridegroom every moment, as they had already heard of his arrival in the city from some friends. The young lady also had narrated to her father all that had taken place in the house of her parents-in-law, and the old man was therefore in a measure prepared to find his son-in-law in no enviable a frame of mind. Our heroine, too, fearing that in his rage and disappointment he would wreak his vengeance on her head, had taken precautions to ensure her safety. She had prepared with her own deft fingers, a figure of herself in some soft material, and covering it with a fine skin, had dressed it in her own clothes and jewels. This figure she had filled with the sweetest honey near the throat, and had placed it on her conch in the attitude of a woman fast asleep. When she heard her husband's footsteps approaching her room, she hid herself behind some curtains. Soon the young man rashed into the room, being escorted to the door of the chamber by his aged father-in-law, who had left him at the threshold and retired to an adjoining room, there to await the course of events. The enraged husband then made the door of the apartment fast, and drawing his dagger, rushed up to where the figure was lying, and with a terrible imprecation plunged the cold steel into its throat. The violence with which he dealt the blow made some of the honey spurt out of the wound like real life-blood, and a drop of it fell on his lips, which were parted in anger, and he was surprised to find that it tasted very sweet. Repentance closely follows a rash deed, and so it did in this case.
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"Ah!" cried he, "what have I done! I have killed with my own hands, one who but a short time ago was all in all to me! One for whom I have endured all the hardships of a rough sea-voyage. Then after a pause he added,-" How sweet her blood tastes; I am sure a faithless woman's blood can never taste half so sweet! Really I have committed a rash and unpardonable deed, I have shed an innocent woman's blood, and thereby destroyed my own happiness, and nothing but my own blood can atone for it. "So saying he raised his dagger and was going to plunge it into his heart, when out rushed his faithful wife from her hiding-place, and stayed his hands in the very nick of time. The lady at that time wore the same disguise in which he had first seen her, and as she clung to his arm and pleaded for mercy, all his old love for her came back to him with redoubled force, and he clasped her in his arms!
The trick of the stuffed figure was then explained to him, and the young man was thankful to find it was no human blood that he had shed. Our heroine then gave him full explanation of the events that had brought her in so strange a fashion under his roof, and the two then went together to the old man and asked for his blessing.
After spending a few days with the good old man, the reconciled son-in-law took the dutiful daughter and faithful wife home to his native country, and there they lived ever afterwards in great happiness.
Before leaving with her husband, the young lady called all her seven cousins to her and explaining to them the trick by which she had become possessed of their ships, restored the vessels to them with all their cargoes intact, and gave besides a valuable present to each of them as a souvenir of the voyage they had made together.
