eventually reach some other country. But he had not long to remain in this pitiable situation. After he had gone a few miles, he met a company of robbers armed to the teeth and under a leader of remarkably stalwart appearance, though bearing the signs of age. The merchant's handsome appearance, seen even under the gloom of despondency that had overcast him, attracted the leader's attention and awoke in him some painful recollection that had long remained dormant in his mind. It was that of his son, no longer in the land of the living, to whom he thought the young man before him bore an exact likeness. He therefore approached the merchant, and hearing his story, at once volunteered to rescue him from his helpless position, and took him to the king to compel the latter to hear what the merchant had to say to repel the charges brought against him, and to revise the unjust judgments pronounced against him. The presence of this imposing leader at the head of his men considerably cowed the king, for he by experience knew that they were too formidable to be trifled with.
The king then assembled his court and called upon the merchant to state his case, upon which the latter, according to the instructions of his friend, the robber chief, spoke thus, "O Incarnation of Justice, with your Majesty's permission, I beg to answer the charges on which my ships, merchandise, and men have been taken away from me, and made over to those who plotted against me. May I be heard with impartiality, in the event of which I shall have back everything I have lost. Now as to the first charge brought by the washerman, I beg to say that even if I killed his father in the heron, I did so under great provocation. I started on my voyage with my dead father, who had assumed the form of a dánkoná[1] to show me the way, and when I reached the tree on which the heron was perched, the bird made a swoop on my father, the dánkoná, and made an end of him. Let the washerman, the owner of the first aggressor, give me back my father and then I will do the same with regard to his father."
- ↑ A very small fish.
