` And upon you peace , ' answered the hermit ; but still he never looked up , nor stopped what he was doing . For a minute or two the king stood watching him . He noticed that the hermit threw two leaves in at a time , and watched them attentively . Sometimes both were carried rapidly down by the stream ; sometimes only one leaf was carried off , and the other , after whirling slowly round and round on the edge of the current , would come circling back on an eddy to the hermit 's feet . At other times both leaves were held in the backward eddy , and failed to reach the main current of the noisy stream . ` What are you doing ? ' asked the king at last , and the hermit replied that he was reading the fates of men ; every one 's fate , he said , was settled from the beginning , and , whatever it were , there was no escape from it . The king laughed . ' I care little , ' he said , ` what my fate may be ; but I should be curious to know the fate of my little daughter . ' ' I can not say , ' answered the hermit . ` Do you not know , then ? ' demanded the king . ' I might know , ' returned the hermit , ` but it is not always wisdom to know much . ' But the king was not content with this reply , and began to press the old man to say what he knew , which for a long time he would not do . At last , however , the king urged him so greatly that he said : ` The king 's daughter will marry the son of a poor slave-girl called Puruna , who belongs to the king of the land of the north . There is no escaping from Fate . ' The king was wild with anger at hearing these words , but he was also very tired ; so he only laughed , and answered that he hoped there would be a way out of THAT fate anyhow . Then he asked if the hermit could shelter him and his beasts for the night , and the hermit said ` Yes ' ; so , very soon the king had watered and tethered his horse , and , after a supper of bread and parched peas , lay down in the cave , with the hound at his feet , and tried to go to sleep . But instead of sleeping he only lay awake and thought of the hermit 's prophecy ; and the more he thought of it the angrier he felt , until he gnashed his teeth and declared that it should never , never come true . Morning came , and the king got up , pale and sulky , and , after learning from the hermit which path to take , was soon mounted and found his way home without much difficulty .
Directly he reached his palace he wrote a letter to the king of the land of the north , begging him , as a favour , to sell him his slave girl Puruna and her son , and saying that , if he consented , he would send a messenger to receive them XXXXX the river which divided the kingdoms .
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