e the innocent! Now, if Thou savest, I am
saved.' After this address, I repeated the prayer of _shahadat_, [301]
staggered, and then fell. By the dispensation of God, it so happened,
that the king of that country was attacked with the cholic; the nobles
and physicians assembled; whatever remedies they applied, produced no
good. One holy man said, 'The best of all remedies is, that alms be
given to the destitute, and that all prisoners should be released;
for in prayer there is greater efficacy than in physic.' Instantly
the royal messengers went off running towards the prisons.

"By chance, some one came to that plain [where I was], and seeing
a crowd, he ascertained [from a bystander] that they were placing
some person on the stake. Immediately on hearing this, he galloped
up to the stake, and cut the ropes with his sword. He threatened
and chastised the magistrate's soldiers, and said, "At such a time,
when the king is in such a state, are you going to put a creature of
God to death?' and he got me released. Upon which, these two brothers
went again to the magistrate, and urged him to put me to death. As
this official had already taken a bribe from them, he [readily]
acquiesced to do whatever they dictated.

"The magistrate said to them, 'Rest satisfied; I will now confine him
in such a way, that he will of himself, from want of food and drink,
die of sheer exhaustion, and no one will know anything about it.' They
re-seized me, and kept me In a corner. About a _kos_ without the city
was a mountain, in which, in the time of Solomon, the _divs_ had dug
a deep and narrow well; it was called Solomon's prison. Whoever fell
greatly under the king's wrath, was confined in that well, where he
perished of himself [from hunger and thirst]. To shorten my story,
these two brothers and the magistrate's soldiers carried me at night,
in silence, to the mountain, and having cast me into that pit, and
thus set their own minds at ease, they returned. O king, this dog
went with me, and when they put me into the well, he remained lying
on its brink. I lay some time senseless in the inside, and then a
little consciousness returned to me; I conceived myself to be dead,
and that place my grave At this time I heard the sounds of two men's
voices, who were saying something to each other; I concluded that
these were _Nakir_ and _Munkir_, [302] who were come to question me;
and I likewise heard the rustling of a rope, as if some one had let it