and bought of him the rubies for a thousand gold pieces.  Then said the Prince to him, “Equip thyself to go with me to my country.”  So he made ready and went with him till the king’s son drew near the frontiers of his sire’s kingdom, where the people received him with most honourable reception and sent to acquaint his father with his son’s arrival.  The king came out to meet him and they entreated the goldsmith with respect and regard.  The Prince abode a while with his sire, then set out, he and the goldsmith, to return to the country of the fair one, the daughter of the king of Hind; but there met him highwaymen by the way and he fought the sorest of fights and was slain.  The goldsmith buried him and set a mark[FN#361] on his grave and returned to his own country sorrowing and distraught, without telling any of the Prince’s violent death.  Such was the case of the king’s son and the goldsmith; but as regards the Indian king’s daughter of whom the Prince went in quest and on whose account he was slain, she had been wont to look out from the topmost terrace of her palace and to gaze on the youth and on his beauty and loveliness; so she said to her slave-girl one day, “Out on thee!  What is become of the troops which were camped beside my palace?” The maid replied, “They were the troops of the youth, son to the Persian king, who came to demand thee in wedlock, and wearied himself on thine account, but thou hadst no ruth on him.”  Cried the Princess, “Woe to thee!  Why didst thou not tell me?” and the damsel replied, “I feared thy fury.”  Then she sought an audience of the king her sire and said to him, “By Allah, I will go in quest of him, even as he came in quest of me; else should I not do him justice as due.”  So she equipped herself and setting out, traversed the wastes and spent treasures till she came to Sistan, where she called a goldsmith to make her somewhat of ornaments.  Now as soon as the goldsmith saw her, he knew her (for that the Prince had talked with him of her and had depictured her to him), so he questioned her of her case, and she acquainted him with her errand, whereupon he buffeted his face and rent his raiment and hove dust on his head and fell a-weeping.  Quoth she, “Why dost thou all this?” And he acquainted her with the Prince’s case and how he was his comrade and told her that he was dead; whereat she grieved for him and faring on to his father and mother, acquainted them with the case.  Thereupon the Prince’s father and his uncle and his mother and the lords of the land repaired to his grave and the Princess made mourning over him, crying aloud.  She abode by the tomb a whole month; then she caused fetch painters and bade them limn her likeness and the portraiture of the king’s son.  She also set down in writing their story and that which had befallen them of perils and afflictions and placed it, together with the pictures, at the head of the grave; and after a little, they departed from the spot.  “Nor” (continued the Wazir), “is this stranger, O king of the age, than the story of the Fuller and his Wife and the Trooper and what passed between them.”  With this the king bade the Minister hie away to his lodging, and when he arose in the morning, he abode his day in his house.