Part 22 (2/2)

At the end of three months they carried the Youngest Brother on their wings to the distant kingdom where the Warrior Princess, Flower o' the World, lived.

At midnight they set him down in front of the palace and he slipped unseen through the guards at the gate and through the halls of the palace to the Princess's own chamber. The lion, the wolf, and the tiger were asleep and he was able to push back the curtain before which they were lying and creep up to the Princess's very bedside without being discovered.

He looked once at the sleeping Flower o' the World and she was so beautiful that he dared not look again for fear he should forget the Nightingale Gisar and betray himself by crying out.

At the head of the bed were four lighted candles and at the foot four unlighted ones. He blew out the lighted ones and lit the others. Then quickly he took the golden cage in which the Nightingale Gisar was perched asleep, unfastened it from the golden chain on which it was hanging, and hurried out. The eagles were waiting for him and at once they spread their wings and carried him away.

They put him down at the crossroads where he had parted from his brothers just one year before. Then they bade him farewell and flew off to their home in the desert.

”My brothers will probably be here in an hour or so,” the Youngest Son thought. ”I had better wait for them.”

He felt sleepy, so he lay down by the roadside and closed his eyes.

While he slept his brothers arrived and of course the first thing they saw was the golden cage and the Nightingale Gisar.

Then envy and hatred filled their hearts and they began cursing and complaining to think that he who was the Youngest had succeeded where they had failed.

”We'll be the laughing-stock of the whole country!” they said, ”if we let him come home carrying the Nightingale Gisar! Let us take the bird while he sleeps and hurry home with it. Then if he comes home later and says it was he who really found the bird no one will believe him.”

So they beat their brother into insensibility and tore his clothes to rags to make him think that he had been set upon by robbers, and then taking the golden cage and the Nightingale Gisar they hurried home and presented themselves to their father, the Sultan.

”Here, O father,” they said, ”is the Nightingale Gisar! To get this glorious bird for you we have endured all the perils in the world!”

”And your Youngest Brother,” the Sultan asked, ”where is he?”

”The Youngest? Think no more of him, father, for he is unworthy to be your son. Instead of searching the wide world for the Nightingale Gisar, he settled down in the first city he reached and lived a life of idleness and ease. Some say he became a barber and some say he opened a coffee-house and spent his days chatting with pa.s.sing travelers. He has not come home with us for no doubt it shames him to know that we have succeeded where he has failed.”

The Sultan was grieved to hear this evil report of his Youngest Son, but he was overjoyed to have the Nightingale Gisar. He had the golden cage carried to the mosque and hung beside the fountain in the court.

But imagine his disappointment when the bird refused to sing!

”Let him who found the Nightingale come to the mosque,” the Dervish said in his droning sing-song voice, ”and then the Nightingale will sing.”

The Sultan immediately sent for his two sons. They came but still the bird was silent.

”See now,” the Sultan said, ”my two sons are here and yet the bird is silent.”

But the Dervish would only repeat:

”Let him who found the Nightingale come to the mosque and then the Nightingale will sing.”

The next day a youth in rags whom n.o.body knew entered the mosque to pray and instantly the Nightingale began to sing.

A messenger was sent running to the Sultan with the news that the Nightingale was singing. The Sultan hurried to the mosque but by the time he got there the beggar youth was gone and the Nightingale had stopped singing.

”Now that I'm here,” cried the Sultan, ”why does the bird not sing?”

The Dervish, swaying his body gently back and forth, made answer as before:

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