come with me if you like, or if not, I am going myself." His wife said, "I will stay here by my children's graves ; I will not go with you."
Drīs thereupon set out, and when night fell he slept in the desert, and in the morning he again went forward. Coming to a field, he saw that there was a crop of water-melons there. He plucked one and took it with him, intending to eat it further on, and just then he noticed a body of horsemen coming up behind him. Coming up to the prophet Drīs, they salaamed to him, and asked him if he had seen anything of the king's son, who was missing. Drīs said he had seen nothing. He had tied up the water-melon in a knot of his scarf, and seeing it, the horsemen asked him what was tied up in the knot. He said, "It is a water-melon"; and they said, "Untie it and let us see it." When he untied it, they saw the king's son's head ! On this they seized Drīs, and said, "You have killed the prince ; you have his head with you !" They carried him before the king, and by the king's order they cut off his hands and they cut off his feet, and they put out his eyes, and cast him forth and left him.
A certain potter saw him, and said, "I am childless, and if the king gives me permission, I will take this man home with me and heal him, and look after him, for God's sake." The king said, "Take him, and look after him." So the potter took him home and healed him, and attended to him. Then Drīs said, "You have cured me, and now seat me on the well-board, that I may drive the oxen and work the well."[1] So they took him and seated him there. Now this well was close to the king's palace, and the king's daughter used to rise early in the morning and read the Kuran. The prophet Drīs used to listen to her voice, and he too, as he worked the well, would repeat passages from .
- ↑ The allusion is to the Persian wheel for raising water from a well. It is worked by oxen, which go round in a circle, and are yoked to a board on which the driver sits. This work could be done by a blind and lame man.
