y, the sultan sent
for his wife, and when she had come, he sent into the two rooms for the
two kaftans and their makers.

Labakan entered triumphantly, and spread his kaftan before the
astonished eyes of the sultan. "Look here, father!" said he, "see,
honored mother, whether this is not a master-piece of a kaftan? I would
be willing to lay a wager with the cleverest court tailor that he could
not produce such an one as that."

The sultana smiled, and turned to Omar: "And what have you produced, my
son?" Impatiently he threw down the silk, cloth and scissors on the
floor. "I was brought up to break horses, and to the use of a sword,
and my spear will hit the mark at sixty paces; but the science of the
needle is strange to me, and would have been an unworthy study for a
pupil of Elsi Bey, the ruler of Cairo!"

"O thou true son of my heart!" exclaimed the sultana. "Now, I can
embrace thee, and call thee son! Pardon me, my Husband and Lord,"
continued she, turning to the sultan, "that I have plotted this
stratagem against you. Do you not now see which is the prince, and
which the tailor? Truly, the kaftan that your son has made is superb,
and I should like to ask him of what master he learned his trade."

The sultan sat in deep thought, glancing suspiciously now at his wife
and now at Labakan, who vainly tried to control his blushes and his
discomfiture at having so stupidly betrayed himself.

"Even this proof will not suffice," said the sultan. "But praised be
Allah, I know of a means of finding out whether I have been deceived or
not."

He ordered his fastest horse to be led out, swung himself into the
saddle, and rode into a forest near by, where lived, according to an
old legend, a kind fairy named Adolzaide, who had often stood by the
kings of his race with her counsel in the hour of need.

In the middle of the forest was an open place surrounded by tall
cedars. There lived--so the story ran--the fairy, and it was seldom
that a mortal ventured there, as a certain aversion to the spot had for
ages descended from father to son.

Arriving there, the sultan dismounted, tied his horse to a tree, placed
himself in the centre of the opening, and called out in a loud voice:
"If it be true that you have given my ancestors good advice in the hour
of need, then do not spurn the prayer of their grandson, and give me
advice on a point for which human understanding is too frail."

He had hardly spoken the last word, when