h
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--determined to get the
youth into his clutches--pacified her by promising her a pension large
enough to keep her in comfort; and Nur Mahomed, to his own great
delight, was duly enrolled in the king's army.

As a soldier Nur Mahomed seemed to be in luck. He was rather
surprised, but much pleased, to find that he was always one of those
chosen when any difficult or dangerous enterprise was afoot; and,
although he had the narrowest escapes on some occasions, still, the
very desperat