d by the Bedouins, and the pilgrims were taken prisoners.
My brother became the slave of a man who beat him daily, hoping to
drive him to offer a ransom, although, as Schacabac pointed out, it was
quite useless trouble, as his relations were as poor as himself. At
length the Bedouin grew tired of tormenting, and sent him on a camel to
the top of a high barren mountain, where he left him to take his
chance. A passing caravan, on its way to Bagdad, told me where he was
to be found, and I hurried to his rescue, and brought him in a
deplorable condition back to the town.

"This,"--continued the barber,--"is the tale I related to the Caliph,
who, when I had finished, burst into fits of laughter.

"Well were you called `the Silent,'" said he; "no name was ever better
deserved. But for reasons of my own, which it is not necessary to
mention, I desire you to leave the town, and never to come back."

"I had of course no choice but to obey, and travelled about for several
years until I heard of the death of the Caliph, when I hastily returned
to Bagdad, only to find that all my brothers were dead. It was at this
time that I rendered to the young cripple the important service of
which you have heard, and for which, as you know, he showed such
profound ingratitude, that he preferred rather to leave Bagdad than to
run the risk of seeing me. I sought him long from place to place, but
it was only to-day, when I expected it least, that I came across him,
as much irritated with me as ever"-- So saying the tailor went on to
relate the story of the lame man and the barber, which has already been
told.

"When the barber," he continued, "had finished his tale, we came to the
conclusion that the young man had been right, when he had accused him
of being a great chatter-box. However, we wished to keep him with us,
and share our feast, and we remained at table till the hour of
afternoon prayer. Then the company broke up, and I went back to work
in my shop.

"It was during this interval that the little hunchback, half drunk
already, presented himself before me, singing and playing on his drum.
I took him home, to amuse my wife, and she invited him to supper.
While eating some fish, a bone got into his throat, and in spite of all
we could do, he died shortly. It was all so sudden that we lost our
heads, and in order to divert suspicion from ourselves, we carried the
body to the house of a Jewish physician. He placed it in the chamb