tion, if for
no other reason than to confirm your trust in the stars. Beguiled to
wrong by the arguments of a serving woman, the sultana had a son. It is
a shameful story, yet do I know that she begot the child out of pure
love for me. Hasan was no son of mine. Enough! I have spoken. You can
guess the rest.'

"Mirza Shah paused. I could but drop my eyes and remain silent, for I
dared to make no comment.

"After a brief pause he resumed:

"'In the end she confessed everything to me, that night when you
revealed to us the full truth of what the stars had foretold. As for me,
I helped the stars to run their courses: that is why I sent for Gholab
Khan. Now, you who know my secret, travel away far from here. Respect
the confidence I have given you. There is a bag of gold for you in my
treasurer's charge. We part friends, Syed Ali. Fate, working through
you, its blind instrument, spared the child so that my shame might be
fully atoned. Now go, for I, too, must be up and doing. One timely sally
now from the citadel, and yonder disordered host will be swept back
whence it came.'

"The result was as Mirza Shah had predicted. The beleaguering army fled
at the first onslaught, leaving many hundreds of dead on the field to
keep the mangled corpse of their leader company.

"So, you see, my friends," commented the astrologer, concluding his
tale, "as Mirza Shah most truly said, the stars cannot speak falsely.
Never again have I doubted. The destiny read by me in the heavens that
night when the sultana's babe was born was fulfilled in every detail."

"And the faithless wife?" asked the Rajput. "What became of her?"

"Nay, do not presume to judge her," protested the astrologer. "Judgment
is for Allah. When Mirza Shah returned from his victorious charge, it
was to find his sultana dead on the roof of the women's quarters. She
had seen her son--yes, _her_ son, her own flesh and blood, although not
her husband's--pounded to death under the elephants' feet. So the
unhappy mother had pierced her breast with a dagger, and, by her side,
similarly self-slain, lay the serving woman who had miscounselled her to
wrongdoing, yet, as I could quite well comprehend, from motives of
sincere affection, to safeguard for her her husband's love and to give
her the joy of motherhood for which she craved.

"Mirza Shah lived and ruled well for five-and-twenty years longer. He
remained to the end a childless man: Allah had decreed it so. But he
ever