ime. Really, one
cannot deny that this is a very singular story, and it deserves to be
written in letters of gold."

The executioner speedily untied the knots which confined the doctor,
and was passing the cord round the neck of the tailor, when the Sultan
of Kashgar, who had missed his jester, happened to make inquiry of his
officers as to what had become of him.

"Sire," replied they, "the hunchback having drunk more than was good
for him, escaped from the palace and was seen wandering about the town,
where this morning he was found dead. A man was arrested for having
caused his death, and held in custody till a gallows was erected. At
the moment that he was about to suffer punishment, first one man
arrived, and then another, each accusing themselves of the murder, and
this went on for a long time, and at the present instant the chief of
police is engaged in questioning a man who declares that he alone is
the true assassin."

The Sultan of Kashgar no sooner heard these words than he ordered an
usher to go to the chief of police and to bring all the persons
concerned in the hunchback's death, together with the corpse, that he
wished to see once again. The usher hastened on his errand, but was
only just in time, for the tailor was positively swinging in the air,
when his voice fell upon the silence of the crowd, commanding the
hangman to cut down the body. The hangman, recognising the usher as
one of the king's servants, cut down the tailor, and the usher, seeing
the man was safe, sought the chief of police and gave him the Sultan's
message. Accordingly, the chief of police at once set out for the
palace, taking with him the tailor, the doctor, the purveyor, and the
merchant, who bore the dead hunchback on their shoulders.

When the procession reached the palace the chief of police prostrated
himself at the feet of the Sultan, and related all that he knew of the
matter. The Sultan was so much struck by the circumstances that he
ordered his private historian to write down an exact account of what
had passed, so that in the years to come the miraculous escape of the
four men who had thought themselves murderers might never be forgotten.

The Sultan asked everybody concerned in the hunchback's affair to tell
him their stories. Among others was a prating barber, whose tale of
one of his brothers follows.

The Story of the Barber's Fifth Brother

As long as our father lived Alnaschar was very idle. Ins