“O shameless woman!” David said.  “You would disgrace me a second time.”

They rode together into Chandud-Chanum’s city.  They arrived and dismounted and called Chandud-Chanum’s father.  David said to him:  “Will you give me your daughter for a wife?”

Her father said:  “I will not give her to you.  If you will marry her and live here, I will give her to you.  If you must take her away, I will not give her.  How can I do otherwise?  I have enemies all around me; they will destroy my city.”

And David said:  “I will marry her and stay here.  I will not take her away.”

So they were married and celebrated the wedding, feasting seven days and seven nights.

The time passed by unheeded, and when nine months, nine days and nine hours had passed, God sent them a son.

And David said to Chandud-Chanum:  “If this child is mine, he must have a mark—­he will show great strength.”  They put the child in swaddling-clothes, but instead of bands they bound him with plough-chains.  He began to cry and stir in his cradle and the chain snapped into pieces.

They sent word to David:  “The youngster is a stout fellow.  He has broken the chains.  But one of his hands seems hurt.  He clenches his fist, and no one can open it.”

David came and sat down, looked at the hand and opened it.  In the hand he found a little lump of clotted blood.  “The whole world is to him as a drop of blood, and he will hold it in his hand.  If he lives he will do wonderful deeds.”

Then they christened the boy and gave him the name of Mcher.

Time passed and the boy grew fast, and David left him in Kachiswan with his grandparents, and took Chandud-Chanum with him to Sassun.  The men of Chlat[29] heard David’s coming and they assembled an army, built a rampart, formed their wagons into a fortress, and began to give battle.  When Chandud-Chanum sent her lance against the wall she shattered it and the wagons flew seven leagues away.  Then David went forward and drove the fighters away, saying to them:  “Ye men of Chlat! what shameless people ye be!  Ye wage war on women!  Let me but take my wife to Sassun and I will come back, and we will fight it out.”

[29] The city of Chlat (Turkish “Achlat”) lies northwest of the Sea of Wan.  In olden times it was famous for its splendor, its high walls, and its citadel.  The inhabitants had been injured by David’s father and wished to avenge themselves.

But the men of Chlat believed him not.  “Swear to us by the holy cross you carry; then we will believe you,” said they.

David touched the token with his hand as he thought, but the cross was there and he knew it not, and the power of the cross was that no one could swear by it.

He took Chandud-Chanum to Sassun.  Here he first knew that he had sworn on the cross, for he found the cross lying at his left shoulder where the token had been.

“Now it will go badly with me,” said David.  “Whether I go or whether I stay, it will go badly with me.  And I must go.”