In due time we grew up to man's estate and there was a great
affection between us. Now it was my wont every now and then to
visit my uncle and abide with him several months at a time.
One day, I went to visit him as usual and found him absent
a-hunting; but my cousin received me with the utmost courtesy and
slaughtered sheep and strained wine for me and we sat down to
drink. When the wine had got the mastery of us, my cousin said to
me, "O son of my uncle I have a great service to ask of thee, and
I beg of thee not to baulk me in what I mean to do." "With all my
heart," answered I; and he made me swear by the most solemn oaths
to do his will. Then he went away and returning in a little, with
a lady veiled and perfumed and very richly clad, said to me,
"Take this lady and go before me to the burial-ground and enter
such and such a sepulchre," and he described it to me and I knew
it, "and wait till I come." I could not gainsay him, by reason of
the oath I had sworn to him; so I took the lady and carried her
to the cemetery, and entering the tomb sat down to await my
cousin, who soon rejoined us, carrying a vessel of water, a bag
containing plaster and an adze. He went up to the tomb in the
midst of the sepulchre and loosening its stones with the adze,
laid them on one side after which he fell to digging with the
adze in the earth till he uncovered a trap of iron, as big as a
small door, and raised it, when there appeared beneath it a
winding stair.
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