In Persia there was once a king. On one occasion when he was out hunting he came to the narrow entrance of a valley. It was shut in on either side by vast hills, seemingly the spurs from the distant mountains. These great spurs spread out including a wide tract of land. Towards the entrance where he stood they approached one another, and ended in abrupt cliffs. Across the mouth of the valley stretched a deep ravine. The king, followed by courtiers, galloped along, searching a spot where the deep fissure might be shallower, so that descending into it he might reach the valley by ascending on the opposite side. But at every point the ravine stretched downwards dark and deep, from cliff to cliff, shutting off all access to the valley. At one point only was there a means of crossing. There were two masses of rocks, jutting out one from either side like the abutments of a natural bridge, and they seemed to meet in mid air. The mass trembled and shook as the king spurred his horse over it, and the dislodged stones reverberated from side to side of the chasm till the noise of their falling was lost. Before the first of his courtiers could follow him one of the great piers or abutments gave way—the whole mass fell crashing down. The king was alone in the valley. “So ho,” he cried, “the kingdom of Persia is shrunk to this narrow spot!” and without troubling himself for the moment how he should return, he sped onward. But when he had ridden far into the valley on his steed that could outnumber ten leagues in an hour, and had returned to the entrance of it, he saw no trace of a living soul on the opposite brink of the cleft. No sign was left, save a few reeds bent down by the passage of the mounted train, that any human being had stood on the opposite side for ages. The evening came on apace. Yet no one returned. Again he rode far into the valley. For the most part it was covered with long grass, but here and there a thick and tangled mass of vegetation attested to a great luxuriance of soil, while the surface was intersected here and there with rivulets of clear water, which finally lost their way in the dark gorge over which he had just so rashly adventured. But on no side did the steep cliffs offer any promise of escape. When the night came on he stretched himself beneath one of the few trees not far from the ravine, while his faithful horse stood tranquilly at his head. He did not awake till the moon had risen. But then suddenly he started to his feet, and walking to the edge of the cleft, peered over to the land from whence he had come. For he thought he heard sounds of some kind that were not the natural ones of the rustling wind or the falling water. Looking out he saw clearly opposite to him an old man in ragged clothing, leaning against a rock, holding a long pipe in his hands, on which he now and again played a few wild notes.