Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/82

 path that led from Badur to the ketapan tree, along which Adinda would come. But there was no one to be seen upon the path. He waited a long time, and looked and looked, and still there was no one upon the path. She probably watched all night and then fell asleep at dawn, he thought to console himself. Should he get up and go to Badur? She might be ill— or dead.

He got up and ran along the path to the village. He heard nothing. He saw nothing. Yet voices called and called—“Saidjah! Saidjah!” The women of Badur came out of their houses and looked at him. Their faces were sad. They recognized Saidjah and knew he had come to see Adinda, and that she was not there. The head of the district of Parang-Kudjang had taken away the buffaloes of Adinda’s father. Her mother died of grief. Adinda’s father feared punishment because he could not pay the land-rent, and he had fled. He took Adinda with him. But because Saidjah’s father had been whipped in Buitenzorg for running away, he did not dare go there, but to the district of Lebak, which borders the sea. There they had taken ship. But Saidjah was so grieved he did not understand what they said to him.

He left Badur and went to Tjilang Kahan where he bought a boat. After a few days sail he reached the Campong coast, where there was an uprising against the rule of the Dutch. He joined a troop of soldiers less to fight than to search for Adinda. One day when there was a general massacre of natives who had been subdued by the army of the Netherlands, he