Atondido Stories
to your own country, and I will tell you what to do when we get
there."
The prince always did what his horse told him to do; so he
went to his wife and said to her, "I wish very much to go to my
own country to see my father and mother." "Very well," said his
wife; "I will tell my father and mother, and ask them to let us
go." Then she went to them, and told them, and they consented
to let her and her husband leave them. The King gave his daugh-
ter and the young prince a great many horses, and elephants,
and all sorts of presents, and also a great many sepoys to guard
them. In this grand state they travelled to the prince's country,
which was not a great many miles off. When they reached it they
pitched their tents on the same plain in which the prince had
been left in his box by the nurse, where Shankar and Suri had
swallowed him so often.
When the King, his father, the gardener's daughter's hus-
band, saw the prince's camp, he was very much alarmed, and
thought a great King had come to make war on him. He sent one
of his servants, therefore, to ask whose camp it was. The young
prince then wrote him a letter, in which he said, "You are a great
King. Do not fear me. I am not come to make war on you. I am as
if I were your son. I am a prince who has come to see your coun-
try and to speak with you. I wish to give you a grand feast, to
which every one in your country must come—men and women,
old and young, rich and poor, of all castes; all the children, fa-
kirs, and sepoys. You must bring them all here to me for a week,
and I will feast them all."
The King was delighted with this letter, and ordered all the
men, women, and children of all castes, fakirs, and sepoys, in his
country to go to the prince's camp to a grand feast the prince
would give them. So they all came, and the King brought his
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