Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/294

 286 prince sent back a reply that he would not come. On this, the king sent the wazir to fetch his son; but when the wazir came, the prince said, "I will not leave my brother, I am a Baloch, I will not go." When the wazir came back with this answer, the king was much grieved, thinking, "Have I a son or not?" So he made a proclamation, promising such and such lands rent free to anyone who should get his son back for him. An old woman then came forward, saying, "I'll bring him back for you." The old woman then went to the place where the boys were grazing the kids, and began to pick up the goat's dung and put it in a basket. Then she called out, "One of you boys come here, and help me to collect the goat's dung; I have something to whisper to you." The prince said to his brother, "Go and ask what it is, and help her to gather the dung." The goatherd boy came and helped her, and then said, "Tell me what it is." She put her mouth to his ear and whispered, "I'll tell you a fine thing to-morrow morning." He went back to the prince, his brother, who said, "What did she tell you?" The lad said, "She told me nothing, but said she would tell me to-morrow." This made the prince suspicious; and next day, when the old woman came back and began to gather dung as before, and said, "One of you come and help me," he said to the Baloch, "Go again; perhaps she will tell you to-day." So he went; but the old woman again put him off to the next day. When he came back to the flock of kids, the prince asked what she had told him, and he said, "She told me nothing." The prince's suspicions were strengthened, and he thought the goatherd was concealing something from him. The third day the old woman came again as before, and the Baloch said to the prince, "You go this time." As soon as the prince came up, the old woman said to him, "That Baloch, whom you have made your brother, keeps urging me to arrange a meeting with your sister for him, as he wishes to be her lover." On this the prince fell into a violent rage, and rode off to his father's town, and when he got