Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 1.djvu/329

303 clothes, and finding on his sides the marks of beating with rods, said, “O accursed one, these scars bear witness to thy guilt!” Then they carried him to the chief of the police, whilst he said to himself, “I am undone for my sins and none can save me but God the Most High!” The prefect said to him, “O villain, what made thee enter their house with murderous intent?” “O Amir,” replied my brother, “I conjure thee by Allah, hear my words and hasten not to condemn me!” But the two men said to the prefect, “Wilt thou listen to a robber, who beggars the folk and has the scars of beating on his back?” When the Amir saw the scars on my brother’s sides, he said to him, “They had not done this to thee, save for some great crime.” And he sentenced him to receive a hundred lashes. So they flogged him and mounting him on a camel, paraded him about the city, crying out, “This is the reward and the least of the reward of those who break into people’s houses!” Then they thrust him forth the city, and he wandered at random, till I heard what had befallen him and going in search of him, questioned him of his case. So he told me all that passed and I carried him back privily to Baghdad, where I made him an allowance for his living. STORY OF THE BARBER’S FIFTH BROTHER.

My fifth brother, he of the cropt ears, O Commander of the Faithful, was a poor man, who used to ask alms by night and live by day on what he got thus. Now, our father, who was an old man, far advanced in years, fell sick and died, leaving us seven hundred dirhems. So we took each of us a hundred; but when my brother received his share, he was at a loss to know what to do with it, till he bethought him to buy glass of all sorts and sell it at a profit. So he bought a hundred dirhems’ worth of glass