which thou hast suffered of horrors and that thy death should be this ignoble death, after the endurance of all manner dire distresses.”  But the youth said, “That which hath betided me was writ to me and that which is written none hath power to efface; and if my life-term be advanced, none may defer it."[FN#244] Then the twain passed that night and the following day and the next night and the next day in the hollow, till they were weak with hunger and came nigh upon death and could but groan feebly.  Now it fortuned by the decree of Almighty Allah and His destiny, that Caesar, king of the Greeks, the spouse of Malik Shah’s mother Shah Khatun, went forth a-hunting that morning.  He flushed a head of game, he and his company, and chased it, till they came up with it by that pit, whereupon one of them lighted down from his horse, to slaughter it, hard by the mouth of the hollow.  He heard a sound of low moaning from the sole of the pit; whereat he arose and mounting his horse, waited till the troops were assembled.  Then he acquainted the king with this and he bade one of his servants descend into the hollow:  so the man climbed down and brought out the youth and the Eunuch in fainting condition.  They cut their pinion-bonds and poured wine down their throats, till they came to themselves, when the king looked at the Eunuch and recognising him, said, “Harkye, Suchan-one!” The Castrato replied, “Yes, O my lord the king,” and prostrated himself to him; whereat the king wondered with exceeding wonder and asked him, “How camest thou to this place and what hath befallen thee?” The Eunuch answered, “I went and took out the treasure and brought it thus far; but the evil eye was behind me and I unknowing.  So the thieves took us alone here and seized the money and cast us into this pit that we might die the slow death of hunger, even as they had done with others; but Allah the Most High sent thee, in pity to us.”  The king marvelled, he and his, and praised the Lord for that he had come thither; after which he turned to the Castrato and said to him, “What is this youth thou hast with thee?” He replied, “O king, this is the son of a nurse who belonged to us and we left him when he was a little one.  I saw him to-day and his mother said to me, ‘Take him with thee;’ so this morning I brought him that he might be a servant to the king, for that he is an adroit youth and a clever.”  Then the king fared on, he and his company, and with them the Eunuch and the youth, who questioned his companion of Bahluwan and his dealing with his subjects, and he replied, saying, “As thy head liveth, O my lord the king, the folk are in sore annoy with him and not one of them wisheth a sight of him, be they high or low.”  When the king returned to his palace, he went in to his wife Shah Khatun and said to her, “I give thee the glad tidings of thine Eunuch’s return;” and he told her what had betided and of the youth whom he had brought with him.  When she heard this, her wits fled and she would have screamed, but