had received and might still receive at the hands of
Chapkin Halid. The Grand Vizier was both furious and amused, so he
spared the Chief Detective and gave orders that guards be placed at
the twenty-four gates of the city, and that Halid be seized at the
first opportunity. A reward was further promised to the person who
would bring him to the Sublime Porte.

Halid was finally caught one night as he was going out of the
Top-Kapou (Cannon Gate), and the guards, rejoicing in their capture,
after considerable consultation decided to bind Halid to a large tree
close to the Guard house, and thus both avoid the loss of sleep and
the anxiety incident to watching over so desperate a character. This
was done, and Halid now thought that his case was hopeless. Towards
dawn, Halid perceived a man with a lantern walking toward the Armenian
Church, and rightly concluded that it was the beadle going to make
ready for the early morning service. So he called out in a loud voice:

"Beadle! Brother! Beadle! Brother! come here quickly."

Now it happened that the beadle was a poor hunchback, and no sooner
did Halid perceive this than he said:

"Quick! Quick! Beadle, look at my back and see if it has gone!"

"See if what has gone?" asked the beadle, carefully looking behind the
tree.

"Why, my hump, of course," answered Halid.

The beadle made a close inspection and declared that he could see no
hump.

"A thousand thanks!" fervently exclaimed Halid, "then please undo the
rope."

The beadle set about to liberate Halid, and at the same time earnestly
begged to be told how he had got rid of the hump, so that he also
might free himself of his deformity. Halid agreed to tell him the
cure, provided the beadle had not yet broken fast, and also that he
was prepared to pay a certain small sum of money for the secret. The
beadle satisfied Halid on both of these points, and the latter
immediately set about binding the hunchback to the tree, and further
told him, on pain of breaking the spell, to repeat sixty-one times the
words: 'Esserti! Pesserti! Sersepeti!' if he did this, the hump would
of a certainty disappear. Halid left the poor beadle religiously and
earnestly repeating the words.

The guards were furious when they found, bound to the tree, a madman,
as they thought, repeating incoherent words, instead of Halid. They
began to unbind the captive, but the only answer they could get to
their host of questions was 'Esserti, Pesserti, Se