Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/99

Rh if he could discern any stream of water, but found none. When he came back Moonshine was dead! Then he fell down on the ground, and wept a long space upon his body, and at nightfall he buried it with solicitude under a heap of stones, crying, "Ah! my brother, how shall I live without thee, my brother?" And he prayed that at Moonshine's next re-birth they might again live together.

Journeying farther on, he came to a pass between two steep rocks, and in one of them was a red door. Going up to the door, he found an ancient Hermit living in a cave within, who addressed him, saying, "Whence art thou, O youth, who seemest oppressed with recent grief?" And Sunshine told him all that had befallen him. Without again speaking the Hermit put into the folds of his girdle a bottle containing a life-restoring cordial, and going to the spot where Moonshine lay buried, restored him to life. Then said he to the two princes, "Live now with me, and be as my two sons." So they lived with him, and were unto him as his two sons.

The desert where this Hermit lived belonged to the kingdom of a Khan dazzling in his glory and resistless in might. Now it was about the season when the Khan and his subjects went every year to direct the flowing of water over the country for fructifying the grain-seeds; but it was the custom every year at this season first, in order to make the Serpent-gods who