ed to get the youth into
his clutches--pacified her by promising her a pension large enough to
keep her in comfort; and Nur Mahomed, to his own great delight, was duly
enrolled in the king's army.

As a soldier Nur Mahomed seemed to be in luck. He was rather surprised,
but much pleased, to find that he was always one of those chosen when
any difficult or dangerous enterprise was afoot; and, although he had
the narrowest escapes on some occasions, still, the very desperateness
of the situations in which he found himself gave him special chances
of displaying his courage. And as he was also modest and generous, he
became a favourite with his officers and his comrades.

Thus it was not very surprising that, before very long, he became
enrolled amongst the picked men of the king's bodyguard. The fact is,
that the king had hoped to have got him killed in some fight or another;
but, seeing that, on the contrary, he throve on hard knocks, he was now
determined to try more direct and desperate methods.

One day, soon after Nur Mahomed had entered the bodyguard, he was
selected to be one of the soldiers told off to escort the king through
the city. The procession was marching on quite smoothly, when a man,
armed with a dagger, rushed out of an alley straight towards the king.
Nur Mahomed, who was the nearest of the guards, threw himself in the
way, and received the stab that had been apparently intended for the
king. Luckily the blow was a hurried one, and the dagger glanced on is
breastbone, so that, although he received a severe wound, his youth and
strength quickly got the better of it. The king was, of course, obliged
to take some notice of this brave deed, and as a reward made him one of
his own attendants.

After this the strange adventures the young man passed through were
endless. Officers of the bodyguard were often sent on all sorts of
secret and difficult errands, and such errands had a curious way of
becoming necessary when Nur Mahomed was on duty. Once, while he was
taking a journey, a foot-bridge gave way under him; once he was attacked
by armed robbers; a rock rolled down upon him in a mountain pass; a
heavy stone coping fell from a roof at his feet in a narrow city alley.
Altogether, Nur Mahomed began to think that, somewhere or other, he had
made an enemy; but he was light-hearted, and the thought did not much
trouble him. He escaped somehow every time, and felt amused rather than
anxious about the next adve