Chalginna, riding in state beyond the great gate, was impressed by the decorations and the gathering. More than three hundred beggars, mainly women and children, bearing palm branches, were gathered around the little prison house and on a throne covered with goat skins, just under the inscription, sat a little boy, wearing a crown of blue lotus flowers and holding a palm branch sceptre. Contemptuously curious, he asked the child’s name and was told, “He is the son of a beggar woman, probably a leper, that lives in a hovel near the gate,” whereat he laughed and rode on. The celebration ended by the planting of a thrifty young palm to the right of the prison. From the day of its planting, each beggar when he had water to spare, poured it about its root, and the tree grew rugged and thrifty from these libations. On each succeeding birthday the same ceremony was repeated, until a grove of fifteen thrifty young palms shaded the prison and made a comfortable resting place for the beggars and the traveling poor. The boy who took the part of king, now almost a man, continued in that character. The assembly of beggars at these birthday ceremonies now numbered thousands. They looked upon the imprisoned king with more favor than on Chalginna, who to feed his extravagances, became an extortionist and was fast making beggars of even his most loyal subjects. It was beginning to be whispered about that many of those who participated in the ceremony were not really beggars, and the captain of the gate suggested to Chalginna that the crowd was growing dangerous. He rode out to see and, impressed by its proportions, determined in the future to forbid the ceremony. Ants ate to a mere shell the stake to which the chain that bound Gisco was attached, and it parted almost of its own accord. He was a great overfed elephant, ponderous in bulk and frame, weighing more than seven tons, and at last grown as tractable and lazy as a puppy. When the stake parted, he had no thought to move beyond the radius of the circle of the chain, but continued to walk the old beat, or stand and sway his great bulk as he had done for so many, many days. He no longer struck at or trumpeted with rage when Chalginna’s troopers rode within reach, but ate nuts and dates from their hand. His old mahout visiting the spot and seeing how the long imprisonment had affected the elephant was moved to tears. He made up his mind, by some expedient, to rouse the spirit of the great beast. Coming through the gate before it was closed, he spent the night without the city and after midnight mounting to the old place on the elephant’s head, sought to ride him to the river pastures; but he circled the old limit of his chain and could not be budged beyond.