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