While the fight went fiercely on, Bāzindah threw himself under a stone, and crowded himself into a hole hardly large enough for a sparrow, and here he passed the day and another night, quivering with terror and distress. But the morning light again illumined the mountain peaks, for the white-pinioned dove of the dawn began to fly from the nest of heaven, and the black raven of night went to his rest like the Sīmūrgh, behind the shades of the distant mountains. Bāzindah began to flutter his weary wings, and look hungrily around him, when he gladly spied another pigeon, with a little grain scattered before him. Rejoicing to see one of his own species, he fluttered eagerly to the grain, but alas! his foot was caught in a snare. “Satan’s the net, the world’s the grain, Our lusts the enticements are, Our hearts, the fowl which greediness Soon lures within the snare.” With bitter reproaches upon the captive pigeon who had thus lured him to destruction, he trembled and struggled, until he broke the decayed net, and turned his tired face toward the home-nest, and flew as rapidly as his forlorn condition would permit. Fearing to attempt again to satisfy his hunger, he was nevertheless compelled to rest, at last, on a wall near a field of corn. A thoughtless boy sent an arrow toward him, and wounded he fell, but he lay so quietly that the young hunter failed to find his game, and at last, weak and wounded, hungry and discouraged, he fluttered by short flights homeward. Nawāzindah heard the flutter of his wings, and flew joyously out to meet him saying: “’Tis I whose eyes expand, my love to find— How shall I thank thee—thou so true and kind.” But when she had caressed him, she saw that he was weak and thin, and she exclaimed, “Oh, beloved, where hast thou been?” Bāzindah replied: “Ask me not what woes, my love,— What pangs have been my lot, All the grief that parting brings, I’ve tasted—ask me not. For travel’s conflict I’ll not lust again, With home and friends perpetual pleasures reign. The truth of the matter is, that I have had much experience, and as long as I live, I will not make another journey, nor go forth until compelled from the corner of our nest.” Then the gentle wife flew out and brought him the daintiest food she could find, and tenderly she caressed the wounded wing with her loving bill, and no thought of reproaches entered her grateful heart. Gently she nursed him back to health and strength, and together they cooed and nestled in their quiet home. THE BLIND MAN AND HIS WHIP.