who had come there to spend the night in devout vigils before the festive procession, he called aloud from the air--"Hear, ye people, this very day there shall fall upon you here the all-destroying goddess of Pestilence, therefore fly to Hari for protection." When they heard this voice from the air, all the inhabitants of Mathurá who were there, being terrified, implored the protection of the god, and remained devoutly muttering prayers to ward off calamity. Lohajangha, for his part, descended from the air, and encouraged them to pray, and after changing that dress of his, came and stood among the people, without being observed. The kuttiní thought, as she sat upon the top of the pillar,--"the god has not come as yet, and I have not reached heaven." At last feeling it impossible to remain up there any longer, she cried out in her fear, so that the people below heard; "Alas! I am falling, I am falling." Hearing that, the people in front of the god's temple were beside themselves, fearing that the destroying goddess was falling upon them, even as had been foretold, and said, "O goddess, do not fall, do not fall." So those people of Mathurá, young and old, spent that night in perpetual dread that the destroying goddess would fall upon them, but at last it came to an end; and then beholding that kuttiní upon the pillar in the state described, [175] the citizens and the king recognized her at once; all the people thereupon forgot their alarm, and burst out laughing, and Rúpiniká herself at last arrived having heard of the occurrence. And when she saw it, she was abashed, and with the help of the people, who were there, she managed to get that mother of hers down from the top of the pillar immediately: then that kuttiní was asked by all the people there, who were filled with curiosity, to tell them the whole story, and she did so. Thereupon the king, the Bráhmans, and the merchants, thinking that that laughable incident must have been brought about by a sorcerer or some person of that description, made a proclamation, that whoever had made a fool of the kuttiní, who had deceived innumerable lovers, was to shew himself, and he would receive a turban of honour on the spot. When he heard that, Lohajangha made himself known to those present, and being questioned, he related the whole story from its commencement. And he offered to the god the discus, shell, club, and lotus of gold, the present which Vibhíshana had sent, and which aroused the astonishment of the people. Then all the people of Mathurá, being pleased, immediately invested him with a turban of honour, and by the command of the king, made that Rúpiniká a free woman. And then Lohajangha, having wreaked upon the kuttiní his wrath caused by her ill-usage of him, lived in great comfort in Mathurá with that beloved of his, being very well off by means of the large stock of jewels which he brought from Lanká.