CHAPTER VI

After embracing his wife and thanking her for saving him, the vizier said to her: “Before we return home, let us give thanks to the great God who helped me in my need by putting into my head the device by which I escaped.” The happy pair then prostrated themselves on the ground, and in fervent words of gratitude expressed their sense of what the God they worshipped had done for them. “And now,” said Dhairya-Sila, “the next thing we have to do is to take the dear little beetle which was the instrument of my rescue back to the place it came from.” And taking off his turban, he showed his wife the tiny creature lying in the soft folds.

Buddhi-Mati led her husband to the garden where she had found the beetle, and Dhairya-Sila laid it tenderly on the ground, fetched some food for it, such as he knew it loved, and there left it to take up its old way of life. The rest of the day he spent quietly in his own home with his wife, keeping out of sight of his servants, lest they should report his return to his master. “You must never breathe a word to any one of how I escaped,” Dhairya-Sila said, and his wife promised that she never would.

11. When the vizier got this promise, what did he forget which could betray how he got down from the tower, if any one went to look at it?

12. Do you think there was any need for the vizier to tell his wife to keep his secret?