210
and he fared on, like a drunken man for excess of perplexity, and stayed not till noontide, when he came to a little town and saw a husbandman hard by, ploughing with a yoke of bulls. Now hunger was sore upon him; so he went up to the ploughman and said to him, ‘Peace be on thee!’ The peasant returned his salutation and said to him, ‘Welcome, O my lord! Art thou one of the Sultan’s officers?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Marouf; and the other said, ‘Alight with me, that I may entertain thee.’ Whereupon Marouf knew him to be a liberal man and said to him, ‘O my brother, I see with thee nought wherewith thou mayst feed me: how is it, then, that thou invitest me?’ ‘O my lord,’ answered the peasant, ‘good is at hand. Alight here: the town is near at hand and I will go [thither] and fetch thee the noon-meal and fodder for thy horse.’ ‘Since the town is near at hand,’ rejoined Marouf, ‘I can go thither as quickly as thou and buy me what I have a mind to in the market and eat.’ ‘O my lord,’ answered the peasant, ‘the place is but a little village and there is no market there, neither selling nor buying. So, I conjure thee by Allah, alight here with me and heal my heart, and I will go thither and return to thee in haste.’
So he alighted and the peasant left him and went off to the village, to fetch him the noonday meal, whilst Marouf abode awaiting him. Presently he said to himself, ‘I have diverted this poor man from his work; but I will arise and plough in his stead, till he come back, to make up for having hindered him from his work.’ So he took the plough and starting the bulls, ploughed a little, till the share struck against something and the beasts stopped. He urged them on, but they could not move the plough; so he looked at the share and finding it caught in a ring of gold, cleared away the soil therefrom and saw that it was set amiddleward an alabaster flag, the bigness of the
