Their entire appearances changed

MANY, MANY YEARS AGO, there was rich man living alone with his wife who had never borne him any children. Finally he decided to buy a maid servant.

    Although he was rich, he had a heart of stone and never gave away a simple cent to charity. He considered poor people more despicable than dogs, and he not only refused them money and food but also cursed them, shouting, "You should have perished rather than come here." If the beggars did not take themselves off, he drove them away with a stick.

    You can imagine how brutally he treated the young slave girl. If anything displeased him he cursed her and beat her, sometimes so badly as to draw blood. The whole day long the house rang with the crack of whips and foul languages, and son all his neighbours nicknamed him "Maraat", meaning "THe Cruel One". The maidservant however, served her master well and faithfully, but when alone she sighed to herself, "Oh, Lord! Why have I come here? What an awful life I am leading! Will I never have any better luck?".

    The saints and deities heard about the cruelty of the man and his wife, and wanted to dis cover the real truth. One of them turned into a barefooted, scurvyheaded begger, and went to the rich man's house, clad only in a few tattered rags. He called out at the door, "Mother! Master of the house! Help me! Give me something to eat. I am so terribly hungry."

    It happened that the old people had gone out and only the maid was at home heating the stove. She used rice straw as fuel, and occasionally there were some grains left in the ears. She had been collecting them for sometime, and now she had a bag of more than two thousand grains. So sorry was she for the miserable beggar that she gave him the bag, but she warned him saying, "Take the rice away quikly. My master is a villian. If he sees you there will be trouble, although the rice I am giving you was collected by myself." When the immortal saw that she had such a kind heart, he did not go away but gave her a handkerchief. "You must wash your face with this," he said, "but be careful not to let other people use it."

    Just at this moment the master and his wife returned. Seeing beggar, they shouted at the maid, "What have you given to the beggar, Slave?" Thev tried to beat the beggar, who ran away when he saw what they intended to do, but the poor girl received another dreadful whipping from her master.

    She began to wash her face every day with the handkerchief, and her heavy, dark face gradually became whiter and more beautiful. Her master was very surprised, and questinoned her closely. She knew she could not keep the matter secret, and therefore told him the whole story. "The only reason why my face became fair is that I washed it with the cloth that the beggar presented me in return for the rice. "When the couple heard this, they shouted at her angrily, "So you did give the beggar some rice! You must give the cloth to us." The servant was very frightened, because the beggar had told her that she alone and no one else could use the hankerchief. But she knew that if she refused she would receive another beating from her master, and so she laid it on her open palms and respectfully handed it to him.

    Next morning, the old couple washed their faces with it, hoping to became as good-looking as their slave girl. But as soon as they had used it, their entire appearances changed. Hair grew all over their bodies, and they turned into monkeys. They ran off into the mountains and never seen again.