Page:Tales of the Sun.djvu/97

Rh taking in his hand the papers, vanished out of the room quickly, like a serpent that had stung.

The sweet words in which the minister’s son clothed his arguments, the rising passion at the thought that he had been falsely imposed upon by a barber’s son, the shame or rather supposed shame that he thought had come over his family, and a thousand other feelings clouded for a time the clear reason of the old king. He saw no other way of putting an end to the shame than by the murder of his dear daughter and son-in-law first, and of his own self and queen afterwards. At once he sent for the executioner, who came in. He gave him his signet-ring, and commanded him to break open the bed-room of his son-in-law that midnight, and murder him with his wife while asleep. The hukums, or orders given with signet-rings, can never be disobeyed. The executioner humbled himself to the ground, as a sign of his accepting the order, and retired to sharpen his knife for his terrible duty.

Neither Subuddhi nor his affectionate wife had any reason to suspect this terrible mandate. The old queen and the treacherous Durbuddhi had equally no reason to know anything about it. The old man, after issuing the hukum, shut himself up in his closet, and began to weep and wail as if he had lost his daughter from that moment. Durbuddhi, after