ertion that all the property had been
left to him, offered me a hundred dinars, which I angrily refused, and
sent a slave to guide me, as he said, into the quarter of the town
where I was then living. He evidently made a sign to the slave whom he
sent with me, for I quickly perceived that he was conducting me, not
towards that part of the town in which my caravanserai was situated,
but along the steep streets leading down to the river. When we got on
to the bank of the stream, and almost at the water's edge, he said he
must return to his master, telling me to continue straight forward, and
that I should find the road all clear. Greatly incensed at the perfidy
of this villainous slave, I suddenly seized him and flung him into the
river before me.

"I was about to retrace my steps, when a voice near to me exclaimed:
'Halloo! some one has cast himself into the river, and my nets will be
destroyed.'

"'Cannot you see,' I said, 'that I threw that scoundrel into the river?'

"'Nay,' said the voice, 'I cannot see, for I am blind.'

"'Allah be merciful to us!' I cried. 'Art thou also blind?' And I
told him my history as you have heard it, and why I had flung the slave
into the water. By the way, what became of the fellow I know not--he
was probably carried away by the stream, for I heard no more of him.

"Then I asked the blind man what it was that he had said of his nets
being broken.

"He answered, 'I am a fisherman, and I doubt not but the rascal will
have destroyed some of my nets, but never mind that, so long as he got
his deserts.'

"'What! can a man that is blind be a fisherman?' I exclaimed.

"'Certainly,' he replied; 'I have caught fish for my living this ten
years, and I will teach you to fish, if you like.'

"I thanked him, and gratefully accepted his offer."

"And thus it came to pass," said Suleiman to Haroun and Giafer, "that I
became a fisherman, and by this means have been enabled to maintain
both Mohammed and myself for the last two years."

The emotions experienced by the Caliph and the Grand Vizier as they
listened to Suleiman's narrative were not altogether the same.

Haroun was so infuriated when he heard of the hard-hearted iniquity of
the Cadi, and the taking of bribes and refusal of justice by Ali ibn
Moulk, the Governor of Bagdad, that he could scarcely restrain himself
from summoning Mesrur and sending at once for their heads.

On the other hand, Giafer listened to the accusations