utiful
genie to go on a visit to his home. At first his father was glad to see
him, but afterwards jealousy of his son and the son's secret place of
dwelling, and suspicion that a son so rich and powerful might have
designs on his throne, led his father to lay hard and cruel burdens on
Prince Ahmed.

However, all that he commanded Ahmed performed by help of the genie,
even things the most impossible. He brought a tent which would cover the
sultan's army, and yet, folded up, lay in the hollow of a man's hand.
This and many other wonderful things did Ahmed perform, till the sultan
asked for a man one foot and a half in height, with a beard thirty feet
long, who could carry a bar of iron weighing five hundredweight.

Such a man the genie found, and the sultan, beholding him, turned away
in disgust; whereat the dwarf flew at him in a rage, and with his iron
bar smote him to death.

Thus, too, did the little man treat all the wicked courtiers and
sorcerers who had incensed the sultan against his son. And Ahmed and the
genie became sultan and sultana of all that world, while Ali and
Nouronnihar reigned over a great province bestowed upon them by Prince
Ahmed.

As for Houssain, he forsook not the life of a holy man living in the
wilderness.

_V.--The Hunchback_

There lived long ago a poor tailor with a pretty wife to whom he was
tenderly attached. One day there came to his door a hunchback, who
played upon a musical instrument and sang to it so amusingly that the
tailor straightway carried him to his wife. So delighted by the
hunchback's singing was the tailor's wife that she cooked a dish of fish
and the three sat down to be merry. But in the midst of the feast a bone
stuck in the hunchback's throat, and before a man could stare he was
dead. Afraid that they should be accused of murder, the tailor conspired
with his wife what they should do. "I have it," said he, and getting a
piece of money he sallied forth at dark with the hunchback's body and
arrived before the house of a doctor.

Here knocked he on the door, and giving the maid a piece of money, bade
her hasten the doctor to his need. So soon as the maid's back was
turned, he placed the hunchback on the top stair and fled. Now the
doctor, coming quickly, struck against the corpse so that it fell to the
bottom of the stairs. "Woe is me, for I have killed a patient!" said he,
and fearing to be accused of murder, carried the body in to his wife.

Now they had