So she hung to him and embraced him and called to her serving-men and attendants and those who were about her; and they took him up and carried him forth of that stead.  When the old woman saw this, she cried out to the Cook within the house, and he said to her, “Fare thou before me.”  So she forewent him and he ran after her and ceased not running till he overtook the party and seizing Salim, exclaimed “What aileth you to take my slave-lad?” Whereupon the Queen cried out at him, saying, “Know that this is my husband, whom I had lost;” and Salim also cried out, saying, “Mercy!  Mercy!  I appeal to Allah and to the Sultan against this Satan!” Therewith a world of folk straightway gathered together and loud rose the cries and the clamours between them; but the most part of them said, “Carry their case up to the Sultan.”  So they referred the matter to the king, who was none other than Salim’s sister Salma.  Then they repaired to the palace and the dragoman went in to Salma and said to her, “O king of the age, here is a Hindi woman, who cometh from the land of Hind, and she hath laid hands on a servant, a young man, claiming him as her husband, who hath been lost to her these two years, and she journeyed not hither save for his sake, and in very sooth these many days she hath done almsdeeds in thy city.  And here is a fellow, a Kitchener, who declareth that the young man is his slave."[FN#547] When the Queen heard these words, her vitals quivered and she groaned from a grieving heart and called to mind her brother and that which had betided him.  Then she bade those around her bring them between her hands, and when she saw them, she knew her brother and was about to cry aloud; but her reason restrained her; yet she could not prevent herself rising up and sitting down.[FN#548] At last, however, she enforced her soul to patience and said to them, “Let each and every of you acquaint me with his case.”  So Salim came forward and kissing ground before the king, lauded him and related to him his story from first to last, until the time of their coming to that city, he and his sister, telling him how he had entered the place and had fallen into the hands of the Cook and that which had betided him and whatso he had suffered from him of beating and collars, of fetters and pinioning, till the man had made him his brother’s Mameluke, a boughten slave, and how the brother had sold him in Hind and he had become king by marrying the Princess:  and how life was not lovesome to him till he should foregather with his sister and now the same Cook bad fallen in with him a second time and had pinioned and fettered him.  Brief, he acquainted her with that which had betided him of sickness and sorrow for the space of a whole year.  When he had made an end of his speech, his wife straightways came forward and told her story, from incept to termination, how her mother bought him[FN#549] from the Cook’s partner and the people of the kingdom came under his rule; nor did she cease telling till she came, in