When King Bhoja again approached the throne, the fifth statuette raised her little golden hand. "Softly, O King! First tell me — when heaven pays you its highest wage, whose hands do you carry it home for?"
And she told this tale. Once a band of demons took to wrecking the fire-sacrifices of the forest sages, scattering the altars and terrifying the hermitages. Hearing of it, Vikramaditya rode out alone, stood guard through seven nights, and drove the demons off. When the great sacrifice was completed at last, its blessing rose to heaven, and the grateful gods appeared in the smoke of the altar. "Ask anything, King," they said. "I did only a king's duty," answered Vikramaditya. "Duty needs no wages." But the gods insisted — and so that he might not refuse heaven's grace, they gave him Kamadhenu, the wish-fulfilling cow, whose milk is plenty itself, who grants whatever her keeper asks. "She is the treasure of treasures," they said. "Famine cannot touch the land where she stands."
Vikramaditya set out for Ujjain, the divine cow walking gently beside his horse. But at the edge of a village he heard weeping. In a bare courtyard sat a brahmin, his wife and their three children around a cold hearth: the drought had eaten their field, the moneylender their roof; the children had not eaten in two days. The brahmin asked for nothing — he only covered his face for shame.
The king looked at Kamadhenu, treasure of treasures, gift of the gods to his own house. Then he placed her tether in the brahmin's hand. "Mother of plenty," he said to the cow, "heaven sent you with me — but here is where you were sent." And he rode on before the family could learn his name, and told no one in Ujjain what had become of heaven's gift.
"He kept the deed and gave away the treasure," said the statuette. "You, O King — could you hand heaven's own gift to the first weeping stranger, and ride away nameless? If so, the throne is yours." And Bhoja stood long in thought, and stepped back.