Twilight Land (19 page)

“My son,” said the widow woman, “has just been to the garden, and has brought home from there the fruit of happiness. Many a day did we search, but never could we find how to enter into the garden, until, the other day, an angel came and showed the way to my son, and he was able not only to gather of the fruit for himself, but to bring an apple for me also.”

Then the poor traveling servant began to thump his head. He saw well enough through the millstone now, and that he, too, might have had one of the fruit if he had but held his tongue a little longer.

Yes, he saw what a fool he had made of himself, when he learned that it was an angel with whom he had been traveling the five days gone.

But, then, we are all of us like the servant for the matter of that; I, too, have traveled with an angel many a day, I dare say, and never knew it.

That night the servant lodged with the widow and her son, and the next day he started back home again upon the way he had traveled before. By evening he had reached the place where the house of the poor couple stood—the house that he had seen the angel set fire to. There he beheld masons and carpenters
hard at work hacking and hewing, and building a fine new house. And there he saw the poor man himself standing by giving them orders. “How is this,” said the traveling servant; “I thought that your house was burned down?”

“So it was, and that is how I came to be rich now,” said the one-time poor man. “I and my wife had lived in our old house for many a long day, and never knew that a great treasure of silver and gold was hidden beneath it, until a few days ago there came an angel and burned it down over our heads, and in the morning we found the treasure. So now we are rich for as long as we may live.”

The next morning the poor servant jogged along on his homeward way more sad and downcast than ever, and by evening he had come to the robbers’ den in the thick woods, and there the old woman came running to the door to meet him.

“Come in!” cried she; “come in and welcome! The robbers are all dead and gone now, and I use the treasure that they left behind to entertain poor travelers like yourself. The other day there came an angel hither, and with him he brought the ring of discord that breeds spite and rage and quarrelling. He gave it to the captain of the band, and after he had gone the robbers fought for it with one another until they were all killed. So now
the world is rid of them, and travelers can come and go as they please.”

Back jogged the traveling servant, and the next day came to the town and to the house of the sorrowful young man. There, lo and behold! Instead of being dark and silent, as it was before, all was ablaze with light and noisy with the sound of rejoicing and merriment. There happened to be one of the household standing at the door, and he knew the servant as the companion of that one who had stolen the ruby ring. Up he came and laid hold of the servant by the collar, calling to his companions that he had caught one of the thieves. Into the house they hauled the poor servant, and into the same room where he had been before, and there sat the young man at a grand feast, with his wife and all his friends around him. But when the young man saw the poor serving-man he came to him and took him by the hand, and set him beside himself at the table. “Nobody except your comrade could be so welcome as you,” said he, “and this is why. An enemy of mine one time gave me a ruby ring, and, though I knew nothing of it, it was the ring of discord that bred strife wherever it came. So, as soon as it was brought into the house, my wife and all my friends fell out with me, and we quarreled so that they all left me. But, though I knew it not at that time, your comrade was
an angel, and took the ring away with him, and now I am as happy as I was sorrowful before.”

By the next night the servant had come back to his home again. Rap! Tap! Tap! He knocked at the door, and the wise man that had been his master opened to him. “What do you want?” said he.

“I want to take service with you again,” said the traveling servant.

“Very well,” said the wise man; “come in and shut the door.”

And for all I know the traveling servant is there to this day. For he is not the only one in the world who has come in sight of the fruit of happiness, and then jogged all the way back home again to cook cabbage and onions and pot-herbs, and to make broth for wiser men than himself to sup.

That is the end of this story.

O
nce upon a time, in a country in the far East, a merchant was traveling towards the city with three horses loaded with rich goods, and a purse containing a hundred pieces of gold money. The day was very hot, and the road dusty and dry, so that, by-and-by, when he reached a spot where a cool, clear spring of water came bubbling out from under a rock beneath the shade of a wide-spreading wayside tree, he was glad enough to stop and refresh himself with a draught of the clear coolness and rest awhile. But while he stooped to drink at the fountain the purse of gold fell from his girdle into the tall grass, and he, not seeing it, let it lie there, and went his way.

Now it chanced that two wood-choppers—the elder by name Ali, the younger Abdallah—who had been in the forest all day chopping wood, came also traveling the same way, and
stopped at the same fountain to drink. There the younger of the two spied the purse lying in the grass, and picked it up. But when he opened it and found it full of gold money, he was like one bereft of wits; he flung his arms, he danced, he shouted, he laughed, he acted like a madman; for never had he seen so much wealth in all of his life before—a hundred pieces of gold money!

Now the older of the two was by nature a merry wag, and though he had never had the chance to taste of pleasure, he thought that nothing in the world could be better worth spending money for than wine and music and dancing. So, when the evening had come, he proposed that they two should go and squander it all at the Inn. But the younger fellow—Abdallah—was by nature just as thrifty as the other was spendthrift, and would not consent to waste what he had found. Nevertheless, he was generous and open-hearted, and grudged his friend nothing; so, though he did not care for a wild life himself, he gave Ali a piece of gold to spend as he chose.

By morning every copper of what had been given to the elder wood-chopper was gone, and he had never had such a good time in his life before. All that day and for a week the head of Ali was so full of the memory of the merry night that he had enjoyed that he could think of nothing else. At last, one evening, he asked Abdallah for another piece of gold, and
Abdallah gave it to him, and by the next morning it had vanished in the same way that the other had flown. By-and-by Ali borrowed a third piece of money, and then a fourth and then a fifth, so that by the time that six months had passed and gone he had spent thirty of the hundred pieces that had been found, and in all that time Abdallah had used not so much as a pistareen.

But when Ali came for the thirty-and-first loan, Abdallah refused to let him have any more money. It was in vain that the elder begged and implored—the younger abided by what he had said.

Then Ali began to put on a threatening front. “You will not let me have the money?” he said.

“No, I will not.”

“You will not?”

“No!”

“Then you shall!” cried Ali; and, so saying, caught the younger wood-chopper by the throat, and began shaking him and shouting “Help! Help! I am robbed! I am robbed!” He made such an uproar that half a hundred men, women, and children were gathered around them in less than a minute. “Here is ingratitude for you!” cried Ali. “Here is wickedness and thievery! Look at this wretch, all good men, and then turn away your eyes! For twelve years have I lived with this young
man as a father might live with a son, and now how does he repay me? He has stolen all that I have in the world—a purse of seventy sequins of gold.”

All this while poor Abdallah had been so amazed that he could do nothing but stand and stare like one stricken dumb; whereupon all the people, thinking him guilty, dragged him off to the judge, reviling him and heaping words of abuse upon him.

Now the judge of that town was known far and near as the “Wise Judge;” but never had he had such a knotty question as this brought up before him, for by this time Abdallah had found his speech, and swore with a great outcry that the money belonged to him.

But at last a gleam of light came to the Wise Judge in his perplexity. “Can any one tell me,” said he, “which of these fellows has had money of late, and which has had none?”

His question was one easily enough answered; a score of people were there to testify that the elder of the two had been living well and spending money freely for six months and more, and a score were also there to swear that Abdallah had lived all the while in penury. “Then that decides the matter,” said the Wise Judge. “The money belongs to the elder wood-chopper.”

“But listen, oh my lord judge!” cried Abdallah. “All that this man has spent I have given to him—I, who found the
money. Yes, my lord, I have given it to him, and myself have spent not so much as a single mite.”

All who were present shouted with laughter at Abdallah’s speech, for who would believe that any one would be so generous as to spend all upon another and none upon himself?

So poor Abdallah was beaten with rods until he confessed where he had hidden his money; then the Wise Judge handed fifty sequins to Ali and kept twenty himself for his decision, and all went their way praising his justice and judgment.

That is to say, all but poor Abdallah; he went to his home weeping and wailing, and with everyone pointing the finger of scorn at him. He was just as poor as ever, and his back was sore with the beating that he had suffered. All that night he continued to weep and wail, and when the morning had come he was weeping and wailing still.

Now it chanced that a wise man passed that way, and, hearing his lamentation, stopped to inquire the cause of his trouble. Abdallah told the other of his sorrow, and the wise man listened, smiling, till he was done, and then he laughed outright. “My son,” said he, “if every one in your case should shed tears as abundantly as you have done, the world would have been drowned in salt water by this time. As for your friend, think not ill of him; no man loveth another who is always giving.”