but he said that having witnessed his child's birth and seen what had happened, he had left home in disgust, and sold himself to the king as a slave, and that therefore it was impossible for him to leave his work. At this, the son went to the king, and asked him to liberate his father. The king was annoyed at the diminutive figure before him, and said that the wood-cutter could be set free only on the payment of cowries (money) as his ransom.
Mr. "One-finger-and-half," as his name was, ran out like a ball set in motion to procure the cowries, and in the course of his journey came to a canal which to him seemed impassable. He was thinking how to cross it, when he felt someone pulling from behind at his tuft of hair. By one jerk he freed it from the stranger's grasp, and looking behind saw a frog, which, being interrogated, said that it had for its father the king of frogs, and that its name was Rung Soondar. At this the wood-cutter's son burst into a laugh of scorn, and was about to punish the young frog by dismembering it, when it said, "By certain mystical powers I know you to be a wood-cutter's son. Now it does not look well for you to be without an axe. You will get one from a blacksmith yonder, on paying a single cowrie." To which the young man answered, "O brother, I am a child, where shall I get a cowrie? For want of cowries I could not liberate my father. I have nothing in the world, and shall ever remain obliged if you can lend me something." The frog, startled at the request, said he had only a single cowrie, and that one with a hole in it. The suggestion of possessing himself of an axe was pleasing to the dwarf, and thinking little of the impediment, he directed his steps towards the blacksmith's, whom he found to be a man of the stature of two fingers and a half, and with a beard longer by half a finger. He was making an axe and a sickle, each half a finger in length. The boy, without the required cowrie, did not at first know how to proceed. But he hit off a clever plan. He approached the smith with stealthy steps, and, unperceived, tied the tuft
