merchant travelling along the highway, and that a royal proclamation had gone forth offering a rich reward to anyone giving information against him. He again went out on pretence of some business, and his wife, taking advantage of his absence, went to the police, and informed them against her husband. Though they had heard nothing of the robbery, or of any royal proclamation, they believed her when they came to know that she was the wife of the offender, and at once sent men with her for his arrest.
They found him at home waiting for the police, and they at once laid hold of him, and took him to the Emperor, who, instead of leaving the judgment of capital offences, of which highway robbery was one, in the hands of the judges appointed by him, took cognizance of them himself. And, after a mere formal trial, Golami was sentenced to death, and sent to prison to wait there till the moment of execution.
The fact was noised abroad, and the prisoner's former mistress, hearing of it, hastened to him and comforted him. She engaged counsel to defend her lover with all the money she had, and Moulvis to offer prayers for him. Not content with these services, she volunteered to remain in prison with him, if thereby she could in any way cheer him up.
Golami sent message after message to his friends, but they neither came to see him, nor sent a word of recognition. They had become his wife's lovers, and with her they merrily talked over his troubles.
At length the day of execution dawned. It happened also to be the last day of the three months allowed for the solution of the questions sent to Raja Prithu on which Golami was led in chains to the place where he was to be executed. There was a large crowd of spectators, in the midst of whom were his false wife and friends. The poor mistress, whose heart was breaking at the sad prospect before him, was waiting in a corner, with swimming eyes raised to the face of him whom she loved more than life. The block of wood, on which his
