even to my life but spare my city."

The Warrior Princess returned this answer:

"I will spare you and your city provided you deliver me your son who
stole from me the Nightingale Gisar. Him I shall have executed or let
live as it pleases me."

Now the Sultan's two sons knew that the Flower o' the World was fated to
marry the man who had stolen from her the Nightingale Gisar, so when
they heard the Princess's demand they were overjoyed thinking that she
would have to fall in love with one of them. So they disputed at great
length as to which of them had done the actual deed of taking the bird,
each insisting that it was he and not his brother. The Sultan himself
had finally to decide between them.

"You have told me," he said, "that you captured the bird together. As
that is the case and as I can't send you both to the Warrior Princess it
is only right that the older should go."

So under a splendid escort the oldest son rode to the tent of the
Warrior Princess. She bade him enter alone and when he appeared before
her she looked at him long and steadily. Then she said:

"Nay, but you are never the man who stole from me the Nightingale Gisar!
You would lack the courage to face the perils of the way!"

The oldest prince answered the Flower o' the World craftily:

"But how, Princess, if I did not steal from you the Nightingale Gisar
was I then able to bring back that glorious bird and hang his cage
beside the fountain in the mosque?"

But Flower o' the World was not to be deceived by such specious words.

"Tell me then," she said, "if it was you who stole my glorious
Nightingale, where did you find him hanging in his golden cage?"

The oldest prince could not answer this, so he said at random:

"I found his golden cage hanging in the cypress tree that grows in the
garden of your palace."

"Enough!" cried the Princess.

She clapped her hands and when her guards appeared she said to them:

"Have this man executed at once and let his head be sent to the Sultan
with the message: _This is the head of a liar and a coward! Send me at
once your son who stole my glorious Nightingale Gisar or I will march
against your city!_"

The Sultan was greatly shocked to receive this message together with the
head of his oldest son.

"Alas!" he cried, calling his second son, "would that I had listened to
you when you insisted that it was you and not your brother who actually
did the deed! Unhappily I listened to your broth