sat down and cried in a corner. Then she remembered that it was
Nagpanchmi Day, and that it was a festival in honour of Nagoba, the
great snake-king. So she prayed under her breath, "Please, please,
snake-king, come and pretend that you have been sent to fetch me
to my father's house!" And the great snake-king heard the prayer
and felt quite sorry for the poor little daughter-in-law who was
crying in the corner. He assumed the guise of a Brahman and came to
the house where the little daughter-in-law was, and said that he had
been sent to fetch her to her father's house. Her father-in-law was
very much astonished. For he wondered why, if the new-comer really
was a relative of the little daughter-in-law, he had never paid him
a visit before. At last he asked the little daughter-in-law who the
new-comer was. She did not know in the least. But she was so overjoyed
that some one should have come for her that she at once answered,
"He is my mother's brother." Her father-in-law believed her and sent
her off in the care of Nagoba, the snake-king. Still disguised as a
Brahman, he took her to the entrance of his underground palace and
there he told her who he was. He then reassumed his true appearance,
and, expanding the mighty hood behind his head, he seated the little
girl on it and took her down to his splendid dwelling-house beneath
the earth. In the central hall he presented her to the snake-queen
and to all the snake-princes, and told them that in no circumstances
whatever were they to bite the little daughter-in-law.

One day the snake-queen was about to be confined. So she asked
the little daughter-in-law to sit by her side with the lamp in
her hand. The little daughter-in-law did so, and a little time
afterwards the snake-queen gave birth to a fresh litter of little
snake-princes. When the little daughter-in-law saw them all wriggling
about, she was frightened out of her wits. She let the lamp slip