they
discovered, wrapped in a napkin, in its most horrid and ghastly state, a
human head!

It fell from the old woman's hands and rolled away some paces, whilst
the horror-struck couple first hid their faces with their hands, and
then looked at each other with countenances which nothing can describe.

"Work!" cried the wife, "work, indeed! pretty work you have made of it!
Was it necessary to go so far, and to take such precautions, to bring
this misfortune on our heads? Did you bring home this dead man's head to
make a suit of clothes of?"

"_Anna senna! Baba senna!_ Curses be on his mother! Perdition seize his
father!" exclaimed the poor tailor, "for bringing me into this dilemma.
My heart misgave me as that dog of a eunuch talked of blindfolding and
silence to me: I thought, as true as I am a Turk, that the job could not
consist only in making a suit of clothes; and sure enough this dog's son
has tacked a head to it. Allah! Allah! what am I to do now? I know not
the way to his home, or else I would take it back to him immediately,
and throw it in his face. We shall have the bostangi bashi and a hundred
other bashis here in a minute, and we shall be made to pay the price of
blood; or, who knows, be hanged, or drowned, or impaled! What shall we
do, eh, Dilferib, my soul, say?"

"Do?" said his wife; "get rid of the head, to be sure: we have no more
right to have it palmed upon us than anybody else."

"But the day will soon dawn," said the tailor, "and then it will be too
late. Let us be doing something at once."

"A thought has struck me," said the old woman. "Our neighbour, the
baker, Hassan, heats his oven at this hour, and begins soon after to
bake his bread for his morning's customers. He frequently has different
sorts of things to bake from the neighbouring houses, which are placed
near the oven's mouth over-night: suppose I put this head into one of
our earthen pots and send it to be baked; no body will find it out until
it is done, and then we need not send for it, so it will remain on the
baker's hands."

Babadul admired his wife's sagacity, and forthwith she put her plan into
execution. When the head had been placed in a baking-pan, she watched
a moment when nobody was at hand, and set it on the ground, in the same
row with the other articles that were to be inserted in Hassan's oven.
The old couple then double-barred the door of their house, and retired
to rest, comforting themselves with the acquisiti