विक्रम चरित (उज्जैन सम्राट् विक्रमादित्य - पराक्रम, न्याय एवं ३२ पुतलियों की कथा सटीक)

121 CHAPTER VIII. Veytal concludes his tale, and disappears. “ PRINCE SOOMUNT hastily returned, with the garland, to the grove where he had left the princess, and began to search for the horse he had hid under the tree. The night was so dark that nothing could be distinguished, and he found neither the horse nor the princess. Thinking, however, that he might possibly have mistaken the tree, he continued looking for them a long time, but it was all to no purpose, —they were nowhere to be found. He became uneasy as the conviction gradually gained upon him that some mis- fortune had befallen the princess. The question as to whether Malattee could be capable of practising a foul deception upon him, for a moment intruded itself in his mind, but it was at once discarded, as being unworthy of him- self and cruelly unjust to her. Had then some thief or other ill-disposed person forcibly taken her away ?—or had she in terror returned to her father’s palace ? He was thus lost in conjecture, without being able to arrive at anything like a satisfactory solution of the mystery in which the princess’ disappearance was shrouded, and so he remained until the night was far advanced. He then thought, and wisely too, that if the princess had not returned to the palace, her father would, as soon as her absence became known, lose no time in scouring the country far and near in search of her, and it would therefore be rash in him needlessly to expose himself to discovery. He therefore disguised himself, and set out towards the north, after carefully securing the garland round his waist. He travelled under the guise of a Manbhavy,* with his clothes dyed a reddish hue, as usually worn by such men. During his

• A member of a certain heretical order. Q 1