Then
quickly he took the golden cage in which the Nightingale Gisar was
perched asleep, unfastened it from the golden chain on which it was
hanging, and hurried out. The eagles were waiting for him and at once
they spread their wings and carried him away.

They put him down at the crossroads where he had parted from his
brothers just one year before. Then they bade him farewell and flew off
to their home in the desert.

"My brothers will probably be here in an hour or so," the Youngest Son
thought. "I had better wait for them."

He felt sleepy, so he lay down by the roadside and closed his eyes.

While he slept his brothers arrived and of course the first thing they
saw was the golden cage and the Nightingale Gisar.

Then envy and hatred filled their hearts and they began cursing and
complaining to think that he who was the Youngest had succeeded where
they had failed.

"We'll be the laughing-stock of the whole country!" they said, "if we
let him come home carrying the Nightingale Gisar! Let us take the bird
while he sleeps and hurry home with it. Then if he comes home later and
says it was he who really found the bird no one will believe him."

So they beat their brother into insensibility and tore his clothes to
rags to make him think that he had been set upon by robbers, and then
taking the golden cage and the Nightingale Gisar they hurried home and
presented themselves to their father, the Sultan.

"Here, O father," they said, "is the Nightingale Gisar! To get this
glorious bird for you we have endured all the perils in the world!"

"And your Youngest Brother," the Sultan asked, "where is he?"

"The Youngest? Think no more of him, father, for he is unworthy to be
your son. Instead of searching the wide world for the Nightingale Gisar,
he settled down in the first city he reached and lived a life of
idleness and ease. Some say he became a barber and some say he opened a
coffee-house and spent his days chatting with passing travelers. He has
not come home with us for no doubt it shames him to know that we have
succeeded where he has failed."

The Sultan was grieved to hear this evil report of his Youngest Son, but
he was overjoyed to have the Nightingale Gisar. He had the golden cage
carried to the mosque and hung beside the fountain in the court.

But imagine his disappointment when the bird refused to sing!

"Let him who found the Nightingale come to the mosque," the Dervish said
in his droning sing-