said the king ; ` you are too old , surely , to have so young a son ! ' Then the old woman , in her fright and distress , confessed the whole story of how she found the baby , and how she rescued and brought him up , and ended by beseeching the king for mercy . It is easy to guess how , as the story came out , the king looked blacker and blacker , and more and more grim , until at last he was half fainting with rage and astonishment . This , then , was the baby he had left to die , after cruelly murdering his mother ! Surely fate might have spared him this ! He wished he had sufficient excuse to put the boy to death , for the old hermit 's prophecy came back to him as strongly as ever ; and yet the young man had done nothing bad enough to deserve such a punishment . Everyone would call him a tyrant if he were to give such an order -- in fact , he dared not try it ! At length he collected himself enough to say : -- ` If this young man will enlist in my army I will let him off . We have need of such as him , and a little discipline will do him good . ' Still the old woman pleaded that she could not live without her son , and was nearly as terrified at the idea of his becoming a soldier as she was at the thought of his being put in prison . But at length the king -- determined 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 XXXXX his own attendants .
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