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floor and fairly wallowed and begged for mercy, and promised never to do it again.

"I don't much think you will," says the monarch, kind of significant like, "because you're liable to have throat trouble mighty soon. As for your beautiful daughter, I'm going to marry her; but I've a notion to have your measly head whacked off at once."

"Alas!" says the jailer, "this is like the case of our father Adam."

"And what was that?" asks the emperor, for those Orientals are always keen to hear a yarn.

the Eighth Domino set up

Well, says the jailer, it's all about how Adam came to his death. Didn't you ever hear that? The emperor said he never had heard it, and the jailer went on. Adam was only nine hundred and thirty years old, when one day he was out in the woods and was surrounded by a troop of lions. They grabbed him before he could get away, and took him to their king, an old lion that lived up in the mountains. When they had got there and he was brought up before the great beast, he was asked what his name was. He said it was Adam. Then they asked him what kind of a creature he was, and he said, "A Man." And when he said that, the old king lion got mad in a jiffy.

"You are of that race that slays all the other beasts!" he says. "One of my people strayed near your dwelling not long ago, and you slew him and skinned him. What have you to say why you also should not be slain and skinned?"

"Your majesty," says Adam, "all I can say is to remind you of an incident that occurred to one of my children. He was"

the Eighth Domino falls!

"No, you don't!" says the king lion. "This reminding business has gone far enough. We have got back to the first man now, and if we reverse this thing and start again towards the nineteenth century, there'll be no stopping it. It might as well end right now."

Whereupon the beasts fell upon Adam and finished him.