Page:The Orient Pearls.djvu/34

18 a fisherman brought two boys, apparently orphans, and as the King under Hindu law is the guardian of all waifs and strays, they made them over to his ministers. The latter, having asked the boys to wait just outside the room of the Queen-elect, went to the King to advise him to marry the lady they had chosen for him.

The boys, left to themselves in the dim twilight, began to while away their time by narrating the adventures each had gone through, and while they were thus talking, the lady in the room leant forward and listened to their stories, and then, suddenly flinging open the door, fell upon their necks and began to kiss them fervently. She was the kidnapped Queen, and the boys were her own two little Princes, miraculously rescued, one from a tiger's jaws and the other from a watery grave!

While the ministers were suggesting matrimony to the King, a messenger came running to the court and informed him of the strange meeting of the lady with her two lost sons.

The King, accompanied by the whole court, went to witness the scene, when, lo and behold! whom did he see but his own missing Queen, embracing her two dear sons who had been given up for dead:

The wicked merchant was thus balked of his prey, and for his very life ran away as fast as his legs could carry him, while the hunter and the fisherman were sent away with handsome rewards.

Thus did virtue triumph in the end. Nay, more, the pretended holy man having ruled the State with