Her iniquitous spirit then fled from the body of Ulin, and the Sultan left her mangled and deformed corpse a prey to the beasts of the forest.
He travelled for several days backward, hoping to find the former companions of his misery, and at last came to the place which he had left, but could see no signs of them; wherefore, concluding that their enchantment was broken by the death of Ulin, the Sultan returned towards Delhi, subsisting on the leaves which the dervish had given him, and on the fruits of the earth, and in twelve days' time arrived at a small town in his own dominions. Here he lodged at a poor cottage, where he found an old woman and her son, and inquired whether she could procure him any horses or mules to carry him the next morning to Delhi.
"Alas!" answered the old woman, "we have no cattle with us; the army has stripped us of all."
"What!" answered Misnar, "has the rebel army been foraging so near Delhi?"
"Alack!" said the old woman, "I think all armies are rebels, for my part. Indeed, the soldiers told us that they were the Sultan's army, and that they were sent to guard us from the rebels; but in the meantime they took our cattle and provision, and paid us nothing for them; and still, every time they came, they called themselves our guardians and friends. If this is all the friendship great men can show us, we poor people should be best pleased to live as far from them as we can."
Although Misnar smiled at the poor woman's speech, yet, lifting up his eyes and hands secretly to heaven, as she went out for sticks to kindle a fire to dress his provisions, he said, "O just and merciful Allah, preserve me from the avarice of ambition! that, while the rich and the proud advise me to delight in blood, I may ever remember the severities which the poor must suffer; and that I may rather rejoice to relieve one oppressed slave, than to enrich ten thousand flattering Emirs of my Court!"
As soon as the old woman entered again into her house, the disguised Sultan advised her and her neighbours to join in a petition, and present it to the Sultan in his divan.
"A petition!" answered the old woman, "and for what?"
"To relieve your distresses," said Misnar.
"Alas! who is to relieve our distresses but Allah?" said the woman.