After a time the Rajah discovered that someone had plucked some of his favourite lotus flowers. People were set to watch, and all the wise men in the kingdom put their heads together to try to discover the thief, but without avail. At last, the excitement about this matter being very great, the Rajah's second son, a brave and noble young prince (brother to him who had found the eldest Princess in the forest) said, "I will certainly discover this thief." It chanced that several fine trees grew around the tank. Into one of these the young Prince climbed one evening (having made a sort of light thatched roof across two of the boughs, to keep off the heavy dews), and there he watched all the night through, but with no more success than his predecessors. There lay the lotus plants, still in the moonlight, without so much as a thieving wind coming to break off one of the flowers. The Prince began to get very sleepy, and thought the delinquent, whoever he might be, could not intend to return, when, in the very early morning, before it was light, who should come down to the tank but an old woman he had often seen near the palace gate? "Aha!" thought the Prince, "this, then, is the thief; but what can this queer old woman want with lotus flowers?" Imagine his astonishment when the old woman sat down on the steps of the tank and began pulling the skin off her face and arms, and from underneath the shrivelled yellow skin came the loveliest face he had ever beheld! So fair, so fresh, so young, so gloriously beautiful, that, appearing thus suddenly, it dazzled the Prince's eyes like a flash of golden lightning. "Ah," thought he, "can this be a woman or a spirit? a devil or an angel in disguise?"