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 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 adventure . It was the custom of that city that the officer for the day of the palace guards should receive all his food direct from the king 's kitchen .
One day , when Nur Mahomed 's turn came to be XXXXX duty , he was just sitting down to a delicious stew that had been sent in from the palace , when one of those gaunt , hungry dogs , which , in eastern countries , run about the streets , poked his nose in at the open guard-room door , and looked at Nur Mahomed with mouth watering and nostrils working .
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