345 
At once he grew angry. 
“I could easily kill you; that is my heart,” it said to the boy; “It 
was certainly that he wanted to kill you,” it told him. 
So he did not do what the other had told him. 
Presently there arrived a physician. “An excellent physician,” was 
said of him. The boy was ill. 
“That is the one,” the other told him, “who means to kill you; he 
will come to see you; then do you kill him,” he was told by the other. 
Soon he came to see him. He held a knife as he lay in his bed. 
“Are you sick?” the other asked him. 
“Yes,” he told him. 
Then, when the other leaned over, he stabbed him and killed him. 
“Dear me, what are you doing? You have killed the physician!” his 
mother said to him. 
“Oh, he was no physician!” he told her; “He was a thief,” he told her) 
“Because he meant to kill me is why I killed him.” 
Then they searched; in his various pockets they found a knife and a 
sword which he carried with him, and poison with which he had meant to 
poison the boy. 
Then he dwelt there. Then, at one time, in the darkness of night 
there arrived ten men who had donkeys as their beasts of burden. One 
of them entered the house. 
“May we camp here for the night?” he asked him. 
“Yes, do; and bring your beasts inside,” he told him. 
“No; they can stand where they are.” 
Accordingly, they tied up their beasts. Then the young woman pre- 
pared a meal; she gave them food. When her guests had eaten, she washed 
the dishes. When she went to pour out the dishwater, she went to where 
the donkeys were, and there she heard someone say to her in a whisper, 
“Is it time?” 
“No,” she answered; “Soon.” 
Those donkeys were carrying none other than robbers in boxes. Then 
the young woman entered the house. She heated some water; she poured 
a great amount of it into a kettle with a spout. Then she took it out of 
the house. Then she opened a box. 
“Is it time?” the man asked her. 
“Yes,” she told him. 
She poured the water into the box; she killed that robber. She 
scalded them all to death. Then she went into the house; she went up- 
stairs to see her master. One of the others was still there. 
“My lord,” she said to her master, “in former time I used to fight, 
and you shall now see how I did, in former time. I shall deck myself as for 
the fight; that is the way I shall dress.” 
“Do indeed!” he told his young handmaid. 
Then the young woman went downstairs; she went and dressed. 
Then she came upstairs. She held a sword and a knife. 
“In former time this was the way we dressed when we fought,” she 
old them. 
