the pillow of his couch on the side farthest from the door.  The jeweller thought Ahmed must be crazy; but as a ray of hope is like a ray from heaven to the wretched, he ran to his couch, and there, to his joy and wonder, found the ruby in the very place described.  He came back to Ahmed, embraced him, called him his dearest friend and the preserver of his life, gave him two hundred pieces of gold, declaring that he was the first astrologer of the age.

Ahmed returned home with his lucky gains, and would gladly have resumed his cobbling but his wife insisting on his continuing to practice his new profession, there was no help but to go out again next day and proclaim his astrological accomplishments.  By mere chance he is the means of a lady recovering a valuable necklace which she had lost at the bath, and forty chests of gold stolen from the king’s treasury, and is finally rewarded with the hand of the king’s daughter in marriage.

STORY OF THE KING WHO LOST KINGDOM, WIFE AND WEALTH.—­Vol.  XI. p. 221.

In the “Indian Antiquary” for June 1886 the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles gives a translation of what he terms a Kashmiri Tale, under the title of “Pride Abased,” which, he says, was told him by “a Brahman named Mukund Bayu, who resides at Suthu, Srinagar,” and which is an interesting variant of the Wazir Er-Rahwan’s second story of the King who lost his Realm and Wealth: 

Kashmiri version.[FN#512]

There was once a king who was noted throughout his dominions for daily boasting of his power and riches.  His ministers at length became weary of this self-glorification, and one day when he demanded of them, as usual, whether there existed in the whole world another king as powerful as he, they plainly told him that there was such another potentate, upon which he assembled his troops and rode forth at their head, challenging the neighbouring kings to fight with him.  Ere long he met with more than his match, for another king came with a great army and utterly defeated him, and took possession of his kingdom.  Disguising himself, the humbled king escaped with his wife and two boys, and arriving at the sea shore, found a ship about to sail.  The master agreed to take him and his family and land them at the port for which he was bound.  But when he beheld the beauty of the queen, he became enamoured of her, and determined to make her his own.  The queen was the first to go on board the ship, and the king and his two sons were about to follow, when they were seized by a party of ruffians, hired by the shipmaster, and held back until the vessel had got fairly under way.  The queen was distracted on seeing her husband and children left behind, and refused to listen to the master’s suit, who, after having tried to win her love for several days without success, resolved to sell her as a slave.  Among the passengers was a merchant, who, seeing that the lady would not accept the shipmaster for her husband,