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 Then the blind man turned to the other beggars, and his hearing told him that by this time there were at least threescore in the street.

'Come, my brothers!' he cried. 'Let us accompany our benefactor to the house of his friend, and afterwards we will wait for him and see that he reaches his own dwelling in safety. Surely it is not fitting that a sheikh of such great consideration should go about the streets at night without so much as an attendant carrying a lantern. Let us go with him.'

Now these last words were the signal agreed upon, and even as Abdullah began to protest that he desired no such honourable escort as the beggars offered him, one came from behind and suddenly drew a thick barley-sack over his head, so that his voice was heard no more, and he was dragged down by the throat, while the one-eyed hunchback caught him by the legs and bound his feet and four others laid hold of his hands and tied them firmly behind him. Nor had Almasta time to utter a single cry before she was bound hand and foot with her head in a sack, like her husband. Then at a signal the beggars took up the two as though they had been bales packed ready for a camel's back, and carried them away swiftly into the darkness, towards the eastern gate where the blind man lived in a ruined house together with three or