nly replied, 'You had better go back without me, for I am
not going to leave my mortar behind, if I stay here till midnight.'

'Do as you like,' said the girls, and started on their walk home.

The night soon fell, and at the last ray of light the mortar suddenly
became an ogre, who threw Dschemila on his back, and carried her off
into a desert place, distant a whole month's journey from her native
town. Here he shut her into a castle, and told her not to fear, as her
life was safe. Then he went back to his wife, leaving Dschemila weeping
over the fate that she had brought upon herself.

Meanwhile the other girls had reached home, and Dschemila's mother came
out to look for her daughter.

'What have you done with her?' she asked anxiously.

'We had to leave her in the wood,' they replied, 'for she had picked up
an iron mortar, and could not manage to carry it.'

So the old woman set off at once for the forest, calling to her daughter
as she hurried along.

'Do go home,' cried the townspeople, as they heard her; 'we will go
and look for your daughter; you are only a woman, and it is a task that
needs strong men.'

But she answered, 'Yes, go; but I will go with you! Perhaps it will be
only her corpse that we shall find after all. She has most likely been
stung by asps, or eaten by wild beasts.'

The men, seeing her heart was bent on it, said no more, but told one of
the girls she must come with them, and show them the place where they
had left Dschemila. They found the bundle of wood lying where she had
dropped it, but the maiden was nowhere to be seen.

'Dschemila! Dschemila!' cried they; but nobody answered.

'If we make a fire, perhaps she will see it,' said one of the men. And
they lit a fire, and then went, one this way, and one that, through the
forest, to look for her, whispering to each other that if she had been
killed by a lion they would be sure to find some trace of it; or if she
had fallen asleep, the sound of their voices would wake her; or if a
snake had bitten her, they would at least come on her corpse.

All night they searched, and when morning broke and they knew no more
than before what had become of the maiden, they grew weary, and said to
the mother: 'It is no use. Let us go home, nothing has happened to your
daughter, except that she has run away with a man.'

'Yes, I will come,' answered she, 'but I must first look in the river.
Perhaps some one has thrown her in there.' But the maide