. All this served to
make more strong the love of Rustem, who immediately demanded of the
king his daughter's hand in marriage. The king, glad enough to have so
powerful a man for his son, consented willingly to the match, and after
they were married amid great rejoicings, Rustem settled down at the
court in quiet enjoyment of his new-found home.

A powerful man like Rustem cannot always remain in idleness, however,
and when news came to him that the Persian king was in need of his
greatest warrior, Rustem took his lasso, his bow and arrows and his
club, mounted Raksh and rode away. Before going, however, he took from
his arm an onyx bracelet that had been his father's, and calling
Tehmina to him handed it to her, saying:

"Take this bracelet, my dear one, and keep it. If we have a child and it
be a girl, weave the bracelet in her hair and she will grow tall,
beautiful and good; if our child be a boy, fasten the bracelet on his
arm, and he will become strong and courageous, a mighty warrior and a
wise counsellor."

SOHRAB

When Rustem had gone Tehmina wept bitterly, but consoled herself with
the thought that her husband would soon return. After her child was
born, she devoted herself to the wonderful boy and waited patiently for
the father that never returned. She remembered the parting words of
Rustem, and fastened upon the arm of her infant son the magic bracelet
of his race.

He was a marvelous boy, this son of Rustem and Tehmina. Beautiful in
face as the moon when it rides the heavens in its fullness, he was
large, well-formed, with limbs as straight as the arrows of his father.
He grew at an astonishing rate. When he was but a month old he was as
tall as any year-old baby; at three years of age he could use the bow,
the lasso and the club with the skill of a man; at five he was as brave
as a lion, and at ten not a man in the kingdom was his match in strength
and agility.

Tehmina, rejoicing in the intelligent, shining face of her boy, had
named him Sohrab, but as she feared that Rustem might send for his son
if he knew that he had so promising a one, she sent word to her husband
that her child was a girl. Disappointed in this, Rustem paid no
attention to his offspring, who grew up unknown to his parent, and
himself ignorant of the name of his father.

When Sohrab was about ten years old he began to notice that, unlike the
other young men, he seemed to have no father. Accordingly he went to his
mother an