'It was on the fourteenth night of the dark half of the month that King
Sudraka heard below a sound of passionate sobbing. 'Ho! there,' he
cried, 'who waits at the gate?'

'I,' replied Vira-vara, 'may it please you.'

'Go and learn what means this weeping,' said the King.

'I go, your Majesty,' answered the Rajpoot, and therewith departed.

'No sooner was he gone than the King repented him of sending one man
alone into a night so dark that a bodkin might pierce a hole in it, and
girding on his scimitar, he followed his guard beyond the city gates.
When Vira-vara had gone thus far he encountered a beautiful and
splendidly dressed lady who was weeping bitterly; and accosting her, he
requested to know her name, and why she thus lamented.

'I am the Fortune of the King Sudraka,' answered she; 'a long while I
have lived happily in the shadow of his arm; but on the third day he
will die, and I must depart, and therefore lament I.'

'Can nothing serve, Divine Lady, to prolong thy stay?' asked the
Rajpoot.

'It might be,' replied the Spirit, 'if thou shouldst cut off the head of
thy first-born Shaktidhar, that hath on his body the thirty-two
auspicious marks of greatness. Were his head offered to the all-helpful
Durga, the Rajah should live a hundred years, and I might tarry beside
him.'