Page:Swahili tales.djvu/155

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SULTAN DARAI.
135

well, he wept much, and those who were there wept much because of the grief of that gazelle. And the Sultan took the gazelle out, and they carried it away.

And those three men returned, and went to tell their mistress. And they said, "Your father has come, and the great gentry of the town came with him, and they have taken the gazelle, and are gone away." And they told the mistress, "Was it not a weeping which was in the well? All the people weeping as on the day when the Sultan's mother died."

And she said, "I, too, since the day the gazelle died, I have not yet eaten food, nor drunk water. I have not spoken, and I have not laughed."

Her father went and buried the gazelle, and made a very great public mourning for it, and there was great mourning for it throughout the city.

Now after the mourning was over, the woman was sleeping with her husband, and at night in her sleep, the woman dreamed that she was at her father's, and while she was dreaming it became morning, and the woman opened her eyes, and saw that she was in her father's town, and in the very house she had there.

And the man dreamed that he was there on the dust-heap, scratching. And, as he dreamed, the sun reached the time of eight o'clock, and that was the time of his going to scratch every day. And when Sultan Darai opened his eyes, he saw his hand was on the dust heap, scratching. And he stared. "Ah! who did I come here with?" And he looked on the right and on the left, and saw nothing, and he looked before and saw darkness, and he looked behind and saw dust. Immediately there were children going by—he had returned to his former