the rain and the mud. When he received no answer, he began to
feel uncomfortable, and he broke out with these words: "O King
Vikram, listen to the true story which I am about to tell thee."


THE VAMPIRE'S FIRST STORY.

In which a man deceives a woman.

In Benares once reigned a mighty prince, by name Pratapamukut,
to whose eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

One morning, the young man, accompanied by the son of his
father's pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went far
into the jungle. At last the twain unexpectedly came upon a
beautiful "tank [FN#47]" of a prodigious size. It was surrounded
by short thick walls of fine baked brick; and flights and ramps of
cut-stone steps, half the length of each face, and adorned with
turrets, pendants, and finials, led down to the water. The
substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen into disrepair,
and from the crevices sprang huge trees, under whose thick shade
the breeze blew freshly, and on whose balmy branches the birds
sang sweetly; the grey squirrels [FN#48] chirruped joyously as
they coursed one another up the gnarled trunks, and from the
pendent llianas the longtailed monkeys were swinging sportively.
The bountiful hand of Sravana [FN#49] had spread the earthen
rampart with a carpet of the softest grass and many-hued wild
flowers, in which were buzzing swarms of bees and myriads of
bright winged insects; and flocks of water fowl, wild geese
Brahmini ducks, bitterns, herons, and cranes, male and female,