Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/139

 daughters. The Padishah and the second brother were again unwilling to agree to it, but the youngest brother stood them out that the bird ought to be allowed to fly back with his sister. Now this bird was the Padishah of the Peris, the emerald Anka. But now let us see what happened in that castle of which we have before spoken.

In this castle there dwelt just about this time a Padishah and his three daughters. Rising one morning and going out, he saw a man walking in the palace. He went out into the courtyard, and saw a serpent cut in two on the staircase, and a sword sticking in the stone column, and going on still further, and searching in all directions, he perceived the bodies of the forty robbers in his castle moat. "Not an enemy, but only the hand of a friend could have done this," thought he; "and he has saved me from the robbers and the serpent. The sword is my good friend's, but where is the sword's master?" And he took counsel with his Vizier.

"Oh, we'll soon get to the bottom of that," said the Vizier. "Let us make a great bath, and invite every one to come and bathe in it for nothing. We will watch carefully each single man, and whosoever has a sheath without a sword will be the man who has saved us." And the Padishah did so. He made ready a big bath, and the whole realm came and bathed in it.