Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/63

 The elder brother looked at the door, and listened to the sad case of his poor old mother, but scold and chide his younger brother as he might the latter grew more cock-a-hoop than ever—he fancied he had done such a clever thing. He had brought the door away with him, he said, in order that no one might get into the house. The wise brother would have given anything to have got rid of the fool, and began turning over in his mind how he might best manage it. He looked before him and behind him, he looked down the high-*road, and there were three horsemen galloping along. The thought instantly occurred to the pair of them that these horsemen were on their track, so they scrambled up a tree forthwith, door and all. They were scarcely comfortably settled when the three horsemen drove up beneath the tree and encamped there. The dusk of evening had come on at the very nick of time, so that they could not see the two brothers.

Now the two brothers would have done very well indeed up in the tree had not one of them been a fool. Mehmed the fool began to practise pleasantries which disturbed the repose of the horsemen beneath the tree. Presently, however, came a crash—bang!—and down on the heads of the three sleepers fell the great heavy door from the top of the tree. "The end of the world has come, the end of the world has