“I am here!” I cried, but he neither moved nor spoke. I applied the Shears, and in a moment the cobweb was hanging in shreds, and I was standing beside my friend. I tried to pull him up, but I could not budge him. I lifted the golden chain from around his neck, and dropped it to the floor. Immediately he raised his head, stretched his arms, looked up at me as if awaking from a dream, and sprang to his feet. “Prince!” he cried, and threw his arms about me in a transport of joy. I calmed him, and when he had recovered himself he said, “What of Babadag?” “He is in the court at this moment,” said I, “bound fast.” “Good news indeed!” he cried. “Let us go!” _The Governor, Being Released, Beholds the Prince’s Daughter_ We sped back to the court, and when Urban beheld my daughter he scattered the blind men right and left and clasped her hand in his. I took from her the end of the thread and knelt in the basin beside the huge body of Babadag, and gazed down into his eyes, glittering up at me in the moonlight through their tangle of hair. I drew the Shears. “No, no!” cried the boy. “You must not! Give me the Shears! I must do it, for you do not love him, and I do! Only the hand of love! Give me the Shears!” “No time for talking!” I cried. “This is no child’s play. Work for a man! And I trust no one but myself! Now for the shearing of the Eyebrow!” The boy shrieked, as if in despair, and with a mighty snap of the Shears I cut in among the hairs of Babadag’s left eyebrow. _The Shearing of the Eyebrow_ A spout of yellow smoke shot upward from his eyebrow, and whirled and spread outward in a cloud, thick, sickening, blinding, pierced with wriggling pencils of light, as if tiny snakes had been set riotously free. It covered us both, so that he was suddenly hidden from my sight. I gasped and choked. My eyes smarted with pain. I snapped blindly away at him through the smoke with my Shears, resolved not to be foiled. There was a sharp crack, as of the snapping of a whip; the Shears had cut,--alas, alas!--not the Eyebrow, but the thread around Babadag’s neck! Instantly the Shears were wrenched from my hand, I did not know how; and I felt them ripping through my smock, and I knew that some injury had been done to my doublet. A terrible voice bellowed, “Hither, accursed dogs, and bind me this peddler!” And the next moment I was lying on my back, with the thread fastened securely about my neck; and my strength was suddenly gone, and the smoke began to clear away. I saw the old man put his arm tenderly about his son, and heard him say, “It’s all right now, my boy. I am not angry. You have put your father in great danger, but not from malice; I know it well. Don’t be grieved; we’ll laugh about it together, hereafter. All’s well again. Come, Figli, my son. Rascals, follow me!”