No soul else would assist them, as we got the then native chief to prohibit it; and these three persons brought on their own heads the pile, on which she seated herself, with the ashes in her bosom.

The husband and his brother set fire to the pile, and she was burned.'[19] 'And what is now your opinion, after a lapse of twenty years ?' 'Why, that she had really been the wife of my brother; for at the pile she prophesied that my nephew Duli should be, what his grandfather had been, high in the service of the Government, and, as you know, he soon after became so.' 'And what did your father think ?' 'He was so satisfied that she had been the wife of his eldest son in a former birth, that he defrayed all the expenses of her funeral ceremonies, and had them all observed with as much magnificence as those of any member of the family.

Her tomb is still to be seen at Khitoli, and that of my brother at Sihora.' I went to look at these tombs with Bholi Sukul himself some short time after this conversation, and found that all the people of the town of Sihora and village of Khitoli really believed that the old Lodhi woman had been his brother's wife in a former birth, and had now burned herself as his widow for the fourth time.

Her tomb is at Khitoli, and his at Sihora.
Notes: 1.

_Sati_, a virtuous woman, especially one who burns herself with her husband.