Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 3, 2025
By this time the day was brightening and the sun rising, and by the gray light the fagot-maker could see about him pretty clearly. Not a sign was to be seen of horses or of treasure or of people nothing but a square block of marble, and upon it a black casket, and upon that again a gold ring, in which was set a blood-red stone.
Her eyes were as black as night, her hair like threads of fine silk, her neck like alabaster, and her lips and her cheeks as soft and as red as rose-leaves. When she saw that Abdallah was looking at her she dropped the curtain of the balcony and was gone, and the fagot-maker rode away, sighing like a furnace.
"Oh, my lord!" croaked the poor fagot-maker, "I found it out yonder in the woods." "Give it to me," said the emperor, "and my treasurer shall count thee out a thousand pieces of gold in exchange." So soon as he had the casket safe in his hands he hurried away to his privy chamber, and there pressed the red stone in his ring.
The fagot-maker carried something under his arm, and what should it be but the very casket in which the Genie had once been imprisoned, and which he the one-time fagot-maker had seen the Genie kick over the tree-tops. The sight of the casket put a sudden thought into his mind. He shouted to his attendants, and bade them haste and bring the fagot-maker to him.
They followed, and he brought them home by the very same way they had come into the forest. They dared not go in at first, but stood outside the door to listen to what their father and mother were saying. The very moment the fagot-maker and his wife reached home the lord of the manor sent them ten crowns, which he had long owed them, and which they never hoped to see.
This gave them new life, for the poor people were dying of hunger. The fagot-maker sent his wife to the butcher's at once. As it was a long while since they had eaten, she bought thrice as much meat as was needed for supper for two people. When they had eaten, the woman said: "Alas! where are our poor children now?
The hut of the fagot-maker was the four walls and a roof and the earth that floored it, but it was wealth because it was shelter. It had two doors which were merely openings in the sides and between them lay the man on sheep-pelts with a cotton abas, which one of the Galileans had left, over him. At one of these doors, sitting sidewise, so that he could watch in or out, sat Joseph.
The fagot-maker began to cut wood, and the children to gather up sticks to make fagots. Their father and mother, seeing them busy at their work, got away from them unbeknown and then all at once ran as fast as they could through a winding by-path. When the children found they were alone, they began to cry with all their might.
"Is there aught else that thou wouldst have?" asked the Genie. The fagot-maker meditated a long time. "I can bethink myself of nothing more just now," said he. The Genie turned to the captain of the troop and said some words to him in a strange tongue, and then in a moment was gone. The captain gave the order to march, and away they all rode with Abdallah in the midst.
Instantly, as it had done in answer to the old man's command, there came a creaking and a groaning, and the rock slowly opened like a door, and there was the passageway yawning before him. For a moment or two the fagot-maker hesitated to enter; but all was as still as death, and finally he plucked up courage and went within.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking