sufficiency, when he loaded his beasts and ceased working, whilst the boy looked for him to let down the rope and draw him up; but he rolled a great stone to the mouth of the pit and went his ways.  When the boy saw what the treasure-seeker had done with him, he relied upon Allah (extolled and exalted be He!) and abode perplexed concerning his case and said, “How bitter be this death!” for indeed the world was darkened on him and the pit was blinded to him.  So he fell a-weeping and saying, “I escaped the lion and the robbers and now is my death to be in this pit, where I shall die by slow degrees.”  And he abode perplexed and looked for nothing but death.  But as he stood pondering, behold, he heard a sound of water rushing with a thunderous noise; so he arose and walked in the pit following the sound, till he came to a corner and heard the mighty coursing of water.  Then he laid his ear to the sound of the current and hearing it rushing in great strength, said to himself, “This is the flowing of a mighty watercourse and needs must I depart life in this place, be it to-day or to-morrow; so I will throw myself into the stream and not die a slow death in this pit.”  Thereupon he called up his courage and gathering up his skirts, cast himself into the water, and it bore him along with force exceeding and carrying him under the earth, stayed not till it brought him out into a deep Wady, adown which ran a great river, that welled up from under the ground.  When he found himself on the face of earth, he abode dazed and a-swoon all that day; after which he came to himself and rising, fared on along that valley; and he ceased not his wayfare, praising Almighty Allah the while, till he came to an inhabited land and a great village in the reign of the king his sire.  So he entered and foregathered with the villagers, who questioned him of his case; whereupon he told them his tale, and they admired how Allah had delivered him from all those dangers.  Then he took up his abode with them and they loved him much.  On this wise happened it to him; but as regards the king, his father, when he went to the pit, as was his wont, and called the nurse, she returned him no answer, whereat his breast was straitened and he let down a man who found the woman dead and the boy gone and acquainted therewith the king, who when he heard this, buffeted his head and wept with sore weeping and descended into the midst of the pit that he might see how the case stood.  There he espied the nurse slain and the lion dead, but beheld not the boy; so he returned and acquainted the astrologers with the soothfastness of their saying, and they replied, “O king, the lion hath eaten him; destiny hath been wroughten upon him and thou art delivered from his hand; for, had he been saved from the lion, we indeed, by Allah, had feared for thee from him, because the king’s destruction would have been at his hand.”  So the king ceased to sorrow for this and the days passed by and the affair was forgotten.  Meanwhile the boy grew