t quite out of patience, the slave Mansouri took Babadul by
his beard, and shaking his head for him, exclaimed with a roar, "Then
tell me, you old dotard! what is it doing?"

"It is baking," answered the tailor, half choked: "I have said it."

"Baking! did you say?" exclaimed the slave, in the greatest amazement;
"what did you bake it for? Are you going to eat it?"

"True, I said: what would you have more?" answered Babadul, "it is now
baking." And then he gave a full account of what he and his wife had
done in the sad dilemma in which they had been placed.

"Show me the way to the baker's," said Mansouri; "at least, we will get
it in its singed state, if we can get it in no other. Whoever thought of
baking the head of the Aga of the Janissaries? _Allah il allah!_"

They then proceeded to the baker Hassan's, who was now about taking his
bread from his oven. As soon as he became acquainted with their errand,
he did not hesitate in telling all the circumstances attending the
transmission of the head from the pipkin to the barber's bracket; happy
to have had an opportunity of exculpating himself of what might possibly
have been brought up against him as a crime.

The three (Mansouri, the tailor, and the baker) then proceeded to the
barber's, and inquired from him what he had done with the head of his
earliest customer.

Kior Ali, after some hesitation, made great assurances that he
looked upon this horrid object as a donation from Eblis himself, and
consequently that he had thought himself justified in transferring it
over to the Giaour Yanaki, who, he made no doubt, had already made his
brother-infidels partake of it in the shape of kabobs. Full of wonder
and amazement, invoking the Prophet at each step, and uncertain as to
the result of such unheard-of adventures, they then added the barber to
their party, and proceeded to Yanaki's cook-shop.

The Greek, confounded at seeing so many of the true believers enter his
house, had a sort of feeling that their business was not of roast meat,
but that they were in search of meat of a less savoury nature. As soon
as the question had been put to him concerning the head, he stoutly
denied having seen it, or knowing anything at all concerning it.

The barber showed the spot where he had placed it, and swore it upon the
Koran.

Mansouri had undertaken the investigation of the point in question, when
they discovered symptoms of the extraordinary agitation that prevailed
in