UNA-BOMBAY 405
king. He remonstrated: " Let me go, I am the king of a
province. You cannot, therefore, kill me for the sacrifice."
The men laughed and said:
"Then this year's sacrifice is going to be unique, and
our goddess will be highly pleased when she finds that we
bring to her altar this tune an exalted personage as an
offering. Come along.11
They dragged the victim to the Kali shrine, not far
away from the spot. He was duly placed on the sacri-
ficial altar. Things were ready for the death-blow, when
the priest observing that his left-hand forefinger was
bandaged, unloosed it, and discovered that a portion of it
was cut off. He said to the men: " This man is not accep-
table to our goddess. Set him free. The goddess wants a
whole man, while the man here has a defect in his body.
A bit of his finger is gone. Let him go.11
" Accordingly, untying the ropes with which he was
bound, the men set the king free and allowed him to depart
in peace.
Now the king remembered the words of the minister,
uttered when Ms finger received the wound: "God does
everything for the best"—indeed had it not been for that
fortunate cut he would have by now been a dead Juan. He
felt keenly for the ill-treatment he had meted out to his
friend. He was anxious to repair the blunder by begging
his forgiveness. So he rambled in the wood, called aloud
the name of the minister, and at last found him. The
minister was resting beneath a tree. Going up to him the
king embraced him with extreme love and said: "Friend,
I seek your forgiveness for the cruelty I inflicted on you.
The truth of your golden saying is brought home to me."
Then he narrated the incident of the intended sacrifice
to the goddess, and how he was set free on account of the
defect in his hand, caused by the knife-cut.
*' Sire/' replied the minister, " you have done me no
harm. So there is nothing to forgive. In truth, you have