the whole interior to pieces in search of the key. The very pillows
under the head of the Keeper had been stabbed and ransacked. It was
nearing daybreak when the Keeper awoke, groggy from the effects of the
narcotic. The guard was roused. The whole place was in confusion. The
robbers had fled, leaving the great golden knocker on the door hanging
from its position; they were removing it when surprised. The nymphs were
untouched. The voice of the Keeper of the Key was deliberate,
authoritative, commanding, amid the confusion. The legs of the guards
quaked beneath them, their heads swam, and they said to each other, "Now
surely is the key gone!" But their master hurried them to their morning
duty, and they escorted him to the well a little beyond daybreak, and,
lo, at the psychological moment, there was the key and back rolled the
lid from the precious well. "Surely," they said, "this man is blessed,
for the key comes to him as a gift from Heaven. The robbers of the earth
are powerless against him." When the citizens of the Seven Sisters
heard of what had taken place in the evil hours of the night they poured
across the drawbridge from the town and acclaimed the Keeper of the Key
before his mansion. He came out on the watch tower, his daughter by his
side, and with dignified mien acknowledged the acclamations of the
citizens. And before he put the lid on the well that night the deformed
tailor and his pards were all dragged through the streets of the Seven
Sisters and cast into prison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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