has stolen from me
my strap." "How!" exclaimed the young man, terror-struck, "wouldst thou
have me commit a murder? Wouldst thou, my father, whom all our tribes
venerate for thy great sanctity, order me to kill a poor traveller,
because he took from thy tent a strap of which he had, doubtless, need?"
"Go, go, my son, hasten, I conjure thee," cried the old man, throwing his
arms about in despair; "go and immolate that stranger, unless thou
wouldst have us all buried beneath the waves." The young man, believing
that his father laboured under a temporary fit of insanity, would not
contradict him, lest he should exasperate him still more; he therefore
mounted his horse and galloped after the Lama of the kingdom of Oui. He
came up with him before the evening: "Holy personage," said he, "pardon
me, that I interrupt your progress; this morning you rested in our tent,
and you took thence a strap, which my father is making a great outcry
for; the fury of the old man is so excessive, that he has ordered me to
put you to death; but it is no more permissible to execute the orders of
a raving old man than it is to fulfil those of a child. Give me back the
strap, and I will return to appease my father." The Lama of the kingdom
of Oui dismounted, took off the girth of his saddle, and gave it to the
young man, saying, "Your father gave me this strap, but, since he regrets
the gift, carry it back to him; old men are fanciful, but we must,
nevertheless, respect them, and carefully avoid occasioning them any
annoyance." The Lama took off his own girdle, made a saddle-girth of it,
and departed, the young man returning in all haste to his tent.

He arrived in the night time, and found his dwelling surrounded by a
multitude of shepherds, who, unable to comprehend the lamentations of the
great saint of their district, were awaiting, in much anxiety, the return
of his son. "My father, my father," cried the young man, dismounting,
"be calm, here is what thou wantedst." "And the stranger?" asked the old
man, "hast thou put him to death?" "I let him depart in peace for his
own country. Should I not have committed a great crime, had I murdered a
Lama who had done you no evil? Here is the strap he took from you."
And, so saying, he put the strap into his father's hands. The old man
shuddered in every limb, for he saw that his son had been overreached:
the same word in Mongol signifies both strap and secret. The old man had
meant that