Roots and berries here abound,
Sweet and fair and luscious found.
But I fear, should robbers come,
They'll despoil my happy home.

The ascetic, on hearing this, to put her off till his father should return, spoke this stanza:

My father foraging for fruit is gone;
The sun is sinking, he'll be here anon.
When back front his fruit-gathering he is come,
We'll start together for thy hermit-home.

Then she thought: "This boy because he has been brought up in a forest does not know that I am a woman, but his father will know it as soon as ever he sees me, and will ask me what business I have here and striking me with the end of his carrying-pole, he will break my head. I must be off before he returns and the object of my coming is already accomplished," and telling him how he was to find his way to her house she repeated another stanza:

[201] Alas! I fear I may no longer stay,
But many a royal saint lives on the way:
Ask one of them to point you out the road;
He'll gladly act as guide to my abode.

When she had thus devised a plan for her escape, she left the hermitage, and bidding the youth, as he was wistfully looking after her, to stay where he was, she returned to the ministers by the same road by which she had come there, and they took her with them to their encampment and by several stages reached Benares. And Sakka that very day was so delighted that he caused rain to fall throughout the whole kingdom. But directly she had left the ascetic, Isisinga, a fever seized upon his frame and all of a tremble he entered the hut of leaves and putting on his upper robe of bark he lay there groaning. In the evening his father returned and missing his son he said, "Where in the world is he gone?" And he put down his carrying-pole and went into the hut, and when he found him lying there he said, "What ails you, my dear son?" And chafing his back he uttered three stanzas:

No wood is cut, no water fetched, no fire alight. I pray
Tell me, thou silly lad, why thus thou dream'st the live-long day.

Until to-day the wood was ever cut,
The fire alight, and pot thereon was put,
My seat arranged, the water fetched. In sooth
Thou found'st thy pleasure in the task, good youth.

To-day no wood is cleft, no water brought,
No fire alight; cooked food in vain is sought.
To-day no welcome hast thou given to me:
What hast thou lost? What sorrow troubles thee?

[202] On hearing his father's words, in explaining the matter, he said:

Here, Sire, to-day a holy youth has been,
A handsome, dapper boy, of winsome mien:
Not over tall nor yet too short was he,
Dark was his hair, as black as black could be.