Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/192

172 Allah, I will not leave my house during the three days that remain to me, and God who is the Truth shall do what He will.’ So he kept his house three days, and on the fourth day, he summoned Cadis and witnesses and made his last dispositions and bade farewell to his children, weeping. Presently in came a messenger from the Khalif and said to him, ‘The Commander of the Faithful is beyond measure wroth and sends to seek thee and swears that the day shall not pass without thy being hanged.’ When Jaafer heard this, he wept and his children and slaves and all that were in the house wept with him. Then they brought him his little daughter, that he might bid her farewell. Now he loved her more than all his other children; so he pressed her to his breast and kissed her and wept over his separation from her; when lo, he felt something round in her bosom and said to her, ‘What is this in thy bosom?’ ‘O my father,’ answered she, ‘it is an apple with the name of our lord the Khalif written on it. Our slave Rihan brought it to me four days ago and would not let me have it, till I gave him two dinars for it.’ When Jaafer heard this, he put his hand into her bosom and took out the apple and knew it and rejoiced, saying, ‘O swift Dispeller of trouble!’ Then he sent for the slave and said to him, ‘Harkye Rihan, whence hadst thou this apple?’ ‘By Allah, O my lord,’ replied he, ‘though lying might get me off, yet is it safer to tell the truth! I did not steal it from thy palace nor from the palace of His Highness nor the garden of the Commander of the Faithful. The fact is that some days ago, I was passing along a certain alley of this city, when I saw some children playing and this apple in the hand of one of them. So I snatched it from him, and he wept and said, “O youth, this apple is my mother’s and she is ill. She longed for apples, and my