if
the marriage had been allowed to proceed as planned. Either way he loses
Carboys' companionship and assistance; and his one wish would be to
preserve both. Well, go on. What next? I'm anxious to hear about the
belt. Where and how does that come in?"

"Well, it appears that Miss Morrison got hold of a humorous book called
'The Brass Bottle,' a fantastic, farcical thing, about a genie who had
been sealed up in a bottle for a thousand years getting out and causing
the poor devil of a hero no end of worry by heaping riches and honours
upon him in the most embarrassing manner. It happened that on the night
Miss Morrison got this book, and read it aloud for the amusement of her
father and lover, Carboys had persuaded Van Nant to spend the evening
with them. Apparently he enjoyed himself, too, for he laughed as
boisterously as any of them over the farcical tale, and would not go
home until he had heard the end of it. When it was finished Miss
Morrison tells me, Carboys, after laughing fit to split his sides over
the predicament of the hero of the book, cried out: 'By George! I wish
some old genie would take it into his head to hunt me up, and try the
same sort of a dodge with me. He wouldn't find this chicken shying his
gold and his gems back at his head, I can tell you. I'd accept all the
Arab slaves and all the palaces he wanted to thrust on me; and then I'd
make 'em all over to you, Mary dear, so you'd never have to do another
day's worrying or pinching in all your life. But never you nor anybody
else depend upon an Arab's gratitude or an Arab's generosity. He'll
promise you the moon, and then wriggle out of giving you so much as a
star--just as Abdul ben Meerza did with me.' And upon Miss Morrison
asking what he meant by that, he replied, laughingly: 'Ask Van, he knew
the old codger better than I--knew his whole blessed family, blow
him!--and was able to talk to the old skinflint in his own outlandish
tongue.'

"Upon Miss Morrison's acting on this suggestion, Van Nant told of an
adventure Carboys had had in Persia some years previously. It appears
that he saved the life of a miserly old Arab called Abdul ben Meerza at
the risk of his own; that the old man was profuse in his expressions of
gratitude, and, on their parting, had said: 'By the Prophet, thou shalt
yet find the tree of this day's planting bear rich fruit for thee and
thy feet walk upon golden stones.' But, in spite of this promise, he had
walked away, and