1116ページ中305ページ

However, after a while one of them said to me (and he had been a

hired servant of our house), "Fortune hath been false to thy

father; his troops betrayed him and the Wazir who slew him now

reigneth in his stead and we lay in wait to seize thee by the

bidding of him." I was well nigh distraught and felt ready to

faint on hearing of my father's death; when they carried me off

and placed me in presence of the usurper. Now between me and him

there was an olden grudge, the cause of which was this. I was

fond of shooting with the stone bow,[FN#194] and it befel one day

as I was standing on the terrace roof of the palace, that a bird

lighted on the top of the Wazir's house when he happened to be

there. I shot at the bird and missed the mark; but I hit the

Wazir's eye and knocked it out as fate and fortune decreed. Even

so saith the poet:-

We tread the path where Fate hath led * The path Fate writ we

fain must tread: And man in one land doomed to die * Death no

where else shall do him dead.