It happened by the gracious decree of God, that hunters who were chasing gazelles surprised a female with a fawn; the former took to flight, and the hunters carried off the little one.  When the mother returned from the pasture, and found her fawn gone, she traversed the desert in all directions in search of it, and at length the crying of the deserted child attracted her.  She lay down by the child, and the child sucked her.  The gazelle left him again to go to graze, but always returned to the little one when she was satisfied.  This went on till it pleased God that she should fall into the net of a hunter.  But she became enraged, tore the net, and fled.  The hunter pursued her, and overtook her when she reached the child, and was about to give him suck.  But the arrival of the hunter compelled the gazelle to take to flight, and the child began to cry, because he was not yet satisfied.  The hunter was astonished at the sight, and when he lifted the child up, he saw the purse under his head, and a string of jewels round his neck.  He immediately took the child with him, and went to a town belonging to an Abyssinian king named Afrakh, who was a dependent of King Saif Ar-Raad.  He handed over the child to him, saying that he had found it in the lair of a gazelle.  When the King took the child into his care, it smiled at him, and God awakened a feeling of love towards him in the King’s heart; and he then noticed the mole on his cheek.  But when his Wazir Sikar Diun, the brother of Sikar Divas, who was Wazir to King Saif Ar-Raad, entered and saw the child, God filled his heart with hate towards him.  “Do not believe what this man told you,” he said, when the King told him the wonderful story of the discovery, “it can only be the child of a mother who has come by it wrongly, and has abandoned it in the desert, and it would be better to kill it.”  “I cannot easily consent to this,” said the King.  But he had hardly spoken, when the palace was filled with sounds of rejoicing, and he was informed that his wife had just been safely delivered of a child.  On this news he took the boy on his arm, and went to his wife, and found that the new-born child was a girl, and that she had a red mole on her cheek.  He wondered when he saw this, and said to Sikar Diun, “See how beautiful they are!” But when the Wazir saw it, he slapped his face, and cast his cap on the ground, exclaiming, “Should these two moles unite, I prophesy the downfall of Abyssinia, for they presage a great calamity.  It would be better to kill either the boy or your daughter.”  “I will kill neither of them,” replied the King, “for they have been guilty of no crime.”  He immediately provided nurses for the two children, naming his daughter Shama (Mole) and the boy Wakhs[FN#471] El Fellat (Lonely one, or Desert); and he reared them in separate apartments, that they might not see each other.  When they were ten years old, Wakhs El Fellat grew very strong, and soon became a practised horseman, and surpassed