Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 2.djvu/396

359 “how comes it that I was in safety in the country of the infidels and am plundered in your realm, what though it be a land of peace and justice?” King Rumzan questioned him of his case, and he replied, “I am a merchant, who have been nigh a score of years absent from my native land, travelling in far countries; and I have a patent of exemption from Damascus, which the late Viceroy King Sherkan wrote me, for that I had made him gift of a slave-girl. Now I was returning to Irak, having with me a hundred loads of rarities of Ind; but, as I drew near Baghdad, the seat of your sovereignty and the abiding-place of your peace and your justice, there came out upon me Bedouins and Kurds banded together from all parts, who slew my men and robbed me of all my goods. This is what hath befallen me.” Then he wept and bemoaned himself before the two Kings, who took compassion on him and swore that they would sally out upon the thieves. So they set out with a hundred horse, each reckoned worth thousands of men, and the merchant went before them, to guide them in the right way. They fared on all that day and the following night till daybreak, when they came to a valley abounding in streams and trees. Here they found the bandits dispersed about the valley, having divided the treasure between them; but there was yet some of it left. So they fell upon them and surrounded them on all sides, nor was it long before they made prize of them all, to the number of near three hundred horsemen, banded together of the scourings of the Arabs. They bound them all, and taking what they could find of the merchant’s goods, returned to Baghdad, where the two Kings sat down upon one throne and passing the prisoners in review before them, questioned them of their condition and their chiefs. So they pointed out to them three men and said, “These are our only chiefs, and it was they who gathered us together from all parts and countries.” The Kings bade