beautiful golden coat, and little silver wings were fastened to his feet, and
his head was garnished with a wreath of flowers the like of which were never
seen on earth. He was like a child of noble birth and fortune, and the small
motherly face of Katipah shone with pride and happiness as she nursed him.

"Where did you steal those things?" asked Bimsha, "and how did that child come
back? I thought he had fallen into the sea and been drowned."

"Ah!" answered Katipah slily, "he was up in the clouds when the kite left him,
and he came down with the rain last night. It is nothing wonderful. You were
foolish, Bimsha, if you thought that to fall into the clouds would do the
child any harm. Up there you can have no idea how beautiful it is--such fields
of gold, such wonderful gardens, such flowers and fruits: it is from there
that all the beauty and wealth of the world must come. See all that he has
brought with him! and it is all your doing, because you cut the cord of the
kite. Oh, clever Bimsha!"

As soon as Bimsha heard that, she ran and got a big kite, and fastening her
own child into the strings, started it to fly. "Do not think," cried the
envious woman, "that you are the only one whose child is to be clothed in
gold! My child is as good as yours any day;wait, and you shall see!"

So presently, when the kite was well up into the clouds, as Katipah's kite had
been, she cut the cord, thinking surely that the same fortune would be for her
as had been for Katipah. But instead of that, all at once the kite fell
headlong to earth, child and all; and when she ran to pick him up, Bimsha
found that her son's life had fallen forfeit to her own enviousness and folly.

The wicked woman went green and purple with jealousy and rage; and running to
the chief magistrate, she told him that while she was flying a kite with her