eness of the situations in which he found himself gave
him special chances of displaying his courage. And as he was also
modest and generous, he became a favourite with his officers and his
comrades.

Thus it was not very surprising that, before very long, he became
enrolled amongst the picked men of the king's bodyguard. The fact is,
that the king had hoped to have got him killed in some fight or
another; but, seeing that, on the contrary, he throve on hard knocks,
he was now determined to try more direct and desperate methods.

One day, soon after Nur Mahomed had entered the bodyguard, he was
selected to be one of the soldiers told off to escort the king through
the city. The procession was marching on quite smoothly, when a man,
armed with a dagger, rushed out of an alley straight towards the king.
Nur Mahomed, who was the nearest of the guards, threw himself in the
way, and received the stab that had been apparently intended for the
king. Luckily the blow was a hurried one, and the dagger glanced on
his breastbone, so that, although he received a severe wound, his
youth and strength quickly got the better of it. The king was, of
course, obliged to take some notice of this brave deed, and as a
reward made him one of his own attendants.

After this the strange adventures the young man passed through were
endless. Officers of the bodyguard were often sent on all sorts of
secret and difficult errands, and such errands had a curious way of
becoming necessary when Nur Mahomed was on duty. Once, while he was
taking a journey, a foot-bridge gave way under him; once he was
attacked by armed robbers; a rock rolled down upon him in a mountain
pass; a heavy stone coping fell from a roof at his feet in a narrow
city alley. Altogether, Nur Mahomed began to think that, somewhere or
other, he had made an enemy; but he was light-hearted, and the thought
did not much trouble him. He escaped somehow every time, and felt
amused rather than anxious about the next adventure.

It was the custom of that city that the officer for the day of the
palace guards should receive all his food direct from the king's
kitchen. One day, when Nur Mahomed's turn came to be on duty, he was
just sitting down to a delicious stew that had been sent in from the
palace, when one of those gaunt, hungry dogs, which, in eastern
countries, run about the streets, poked his nose in at the open
guard-room door, and looked at Nur Mahomed with mouth watering and