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 282 the Dervish. "He had," rejoined the Merchants. "And was he not loaded with honey on one side, and wheat on the other?"—"Most certainly he was," they replied; "and you have seen him so lately, and marked him so particularly, you can, in all probability, conduct us to him."—"My friends," said the Dervish, "I have never seen your Camel, nor ever heard of him but from yourselves."—"A pretty story, truly!" said the Merchants; "but where are the jewels which formed a part of his cargo?"—"I have neither seen your Camel nor your jewels," repeated the Dervish. On this, they seized him, and hurried him before the Cadi, or Judge, where, on the strictest search, nothing could be found upon him, nor could any evidence be offered to convict him, either of falsehood or of theft. They were then about to proceed against him as a sorcerer, when the Dervish, with great calmness, thus addressed the court: "I have been much amused with your surprise, and own that there has been some ground for your suspicions; but I have lived long, and alone; and I can find ample scope for observation, even in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the track of a Camel that had strayed from its owner, because I saw no mark of any human footsteps on the same route; I knew that the animal was blind of one eye, because it had cropped the herbage only on one side of the path: and I perceived that it was lame of one leg from the faint impression that one of its feet had produced upon the sand; I concluded that the animal had lost one tooth, because wherever it had grazed, a small tuft of grass was left uninjured, in the centre of its bite. As to that which formed the burden of the beast, the busy ants informed me that it was wheat on the one side, and the clustering flies, that it was honey on the other."

(Oliver Goldsmith.)