eating Nur Mahomed's
cabbages, and about the young man's hot words; but although the lad
assured them that he had never said anything about murdering anyone,
they replied they were ordered to arrest him, and bring him to take his
trial before the king. So, in spite of his protests, and the wails of
his mother, he was carried off, and in due time brought before the king.
Of course Nur Mahomed never guessed that the supposed pedlar happened to
have been the king himself, although nobody knew it.

But as he was very angry at what he had been told, he declared that he
was going to make an example of this young man, and intended to teach
him that even poor travelling pedlars could get justice in HIS country,
and be protected from such lawlessness. However, just as he was going to
pronounce some very heavy sentence, there was a stir in the court, and
up came Nur Mahomed's old mother, weeping and lamenting, and begging to
be heard. The king ordered her to speak, and she began to plead for the
boy, declaring how good he was, and how he was the support of her old
age, and if he were put in prison she would die. The king asked her who
she was. She replied that she was his mother.

'His mother?' said the king; 'you are too old, surely, to have so young
a son!'

Then the old woman, in her fright and distress, confessed the whole
story of how she found the baby, and how she rescued and brought him up,
and ended by beseeching the king for mercy.

It is easy to guess how, as the story came out, the king looked blacker
and blacker, and more and more grim, until at last he was half fainting
with rage and astonishment. This, then, was the baby he had left to die,
after cruelly murdering his mother! Surely fate might have spared him
this! He wished he had sufficient excuse to put the boy to death, for
the old hermit's prophecy came back to him as strongly as ever; and yet
the young man had done nothing bad enough to deserve such a punishment.
Everyone would call him a tyrant if he were to give such an order--in
fact, he dared not try it!

At length he collected himself enough to say:--'If this young man will
enlist in my army I will let him off. We have need of such as him, and
a little discipline will do him good.' Still the old woman pleaded that
she could not live without her son, and was nearly as terrified at the
idea of his becoming a soldier as she was at the thought of his being
put in prison. But at length the king--determin