Place of Gifts and dismounted at the platform. Everything
happened just as Jamila had foretold; when one or two watches of
the night had passed, he saw that the open ground around him was
full of such stately and splendid animals as he had never seen
before. By-and-by, they made way for a wonderfully big lion,
which was eighty yards from nose to tail-tip, and was a
magnificent creature. The prince advanced and saluted it; it
proudly drooped its head and forelocks and paced to the platform.
Seventy or eighty others were with it, and now encircled it at a
little distance. It laid its right paw over its left, and the
prince took the kerchief Jamila had given him for the purpose,
and rubbed the dust and earth from its face; then brought forward
the game he had prepared, and crossing his hands respectfully on
his breast stood waiting before it. When it wished for food he
cut off pieces of the meat and put them in its mouth. The
serving lions also came near and the prince would have stayed his
hand, but the king-lion signed to him to feed them too. This he
did, laying the meat on the platform. Then the king-lion
beckoned the prince to come near and said: 'Sleep at ease; my
guards will watch.'. So, surrounded by the lion-guard, he slept
till dawn, when the king lion said good-bye, and gave him a few
of his own hairs and said: 'When you are in any difficulty, burn
one of these and I will be there.' Then it went off into the
jungle.

Prince Almas immediately started; he rode till he came to the
parting of the ways. He remembered quite well that the
right-hand way was short and dangerous, but he bethought himself
too that whatever was written on his forehead would happen, and
took the forbidden road. By-and-by he saw a castle, and knew