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 and carried them all back again to their places, without perceiving what Ali Baba had taken away before. Then holding a council, and deliberating upon the matter, they guessed that Cassim, when he was in, could not get out again; but they could not imagine how he had got in. It came into their heads that he might have got down by the top of the cave; but the opening by which it received light was so high, and the top of the rock so inaccessible without—besides that, nothing showed that he had done so—that they believed it hopeless for them to find out. That he came in at the door they could not feel sure, unless he had the secret of making it open. In short, none of them could imagine which way he entered; for they were all persuaded that nobody knew their secret, little imagining that Ali Baba had watched them. But, however it had happened, it was a matter of the greatest importance to them to secure their riches. They agreed, therefore, to cut Cassim's body into four quarters, and to hang two on one side, and two on the other, inside the door of the cave, to terrify any person who might attempt the same thing. They had no sooner taken this resolution than they executed it; and when they had nothing more to detain them, they left the place of their retreat well closed. They mounted their horses, and went to range the roads again, and to attack the caravans they might meet.

In the meantime Cassim's wife was very uneasy when night came, and her husband had not returned. She ran to Ali Baba in a terrible fright, and said, 'I believe, brother-in-law, you know that Cassim, your brother, is gone to the forest, and why; it is now night, and he has not returned; I am afraid some misfortune has befallen him.' Ali Baba, who never doubted that his brother, after what he had said, would go to the forest, told her, without any reflection upon her husband's unhandsome behaviour, that she need not alarm herself, for that certainly Cassim would not think it proper to come into the town till the night was pretty far advanced.

Cassim's wife, considering how much it behoved her husband to keep this thing secret, was the more easily persuaded to believe him. She went home again, and waited patiently till midnight. Then her fear redoubled, and she repented of her foolish curiosity,