Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/129

 "They sent a youth in to me to-day," said the damsel, "maybe his soul is pursuing us."

Then they went on still further, till they came to another garden, where every tree was sparkling with gold and precious stones. Here too the youth broke off a twig and shoved it into his pocket, and immediately the earth and the sky shook, and the rustling of the trees said: "There's a child of man here torturing us, there's a child of man here torturing us," so that both he and the damsel very nearly fell from the buckler in their fright. Not even the efrit knew what to make of it.

After that they came to a bridge, and beyond the bridge was a fairy palace, and there an army of slaves awaited the damsel, and with their hands straight down by their sides they bowed down before her till their foreheads touched the ground. The Sultan's daughter dismounted from the efrit's head, the youth also leaped down; and when they brought the princess a pair of slippers covered with diamonds and precious stones, the youth snatched one of them away, and put it in his pocket. The girl put on one of the slippers, but being unable to find the other, sent for another pair, when, presto! one of these also disappeared. At this the damsel was so annoyed that she walked on without slippers; but the youth, with the turban on his head and the whip and the carpet