Page:Katha sarit sagara, vol2.djvu/440

 mixed with the black pigment of her eyes, she lifted up the veil from my face, and behold and recognized me, and then she was filled with joy, wonder, and fear. Then I said, " Fair one, what is your cause of alarm? Here I am at your service. For Fate, when propitious, brings about unexpected results. I too have endured for your sake intolerable sorrow; the fact is, Fate produces a strange variety of effects in this phenomenal universe. Hereafter I will tell you my story at full length; this is not the time for conversation; now devise, if you can, my beloved, some artifice for escaping from this place." When I said this to the girl, she made the following proposal, which was just what the occasion demanded; " Let us slip out quietly from this house by the back-door; the garden belonging to the house of my father, a noble Kshatríya, is just outside: let us pass through it and go where chance may take us." When she had said this, she hid her ornaments, and I left the house with her by the way which she recommended. So in that night I went a long distance with her, for we feared detection, and in the morning we reached together a great forest. And as we were going along through that savage wilderness, with no comfort but our mutual conversation, noon gradually came on. The sun, like a wicked king, afflicted with his rays the earth that furnished no asylum for travellers, and no shelter.* By that time my beloved was exhausted with fatigue and tortured with thirst, so I slowly carried her into the shade of a tree, which it cost me a great effort to reach. There I tried to restore her by fanning her with my garment, and while I was thus engaged, a buffalo that had escaped with a wound, came towards us. And there followed in eager pursuit of it a man on horseback armed with a bow, whose very appearance proclaimed him" to be a noble-minded hero. He slew that great buffalo with a second wound from a crescent-headed arrow; striking him down as Indra strikes down a mountain with the dint of a thunder-bolt. When he saw us, he advanced towards us, and said kindly to me, " Who are you, my good sir; and who is this lady; and why have you come here?"

Then I shewed my Bráhmanical thread, and gave him an answer which was half truth and half falsehood; " I am a Bráhman, this is my wife : business led us to a foreign land, and on the way our caravan was destroyed by bandits, and we, separating from it, lost our way, and so came to enter this forest; here we have met you, and all our fears are at an end." When I said this, he was moved by compassion for my Bráhmanical character, and said "I am a chief of the foresters, come here to hunt; and