obstinate and self-willed but I said to myself, in mine innocence, “May be she hath not been accustomed to eat with men, and especially she may be too shame faced to eat heartily in presence of her husband:  she will in time do whatso do other folk.”  I thought also that perchance she hath already broken her fast and lost appetite, or haply it hath been her habit to eat alone.  So I said nothing and after dinner went out to smell the air and play the Jarid[FN#261] and thought no more of the matter.  When, however, we two sat again at meat my bride ate after the same fashion as before; nay, she would ever persist in her perversity; whereat I was sore troubled in mind, and marvelled how without food she kept herself alive.  One night it chanced that deeming me fast asleep she rose up in stealth from my side, I being wide awake:  when I saw her step cautiously from the bed as one fearing lest she might disturb me.  I wondered with exceeding wonder why she should arise from sleep to leave me thus and methought I would look into the matter.  Wherefore I still feigned sleep and snored but watched her as I lay, and presently saw her dress herself and leave the room; I then sprang off the bed and throwing on my robe and slinging my sword across my shoulder looked out of the window to spy whither she went.  Presently she crossed the courtyard and opening the street-door fared forth; and I also ran out through the entrance which she had left unlocked; then followed her by the light of the moon until she entered a cemetery hard by our home.—­And as the morn began to dawn Shahrazad held her peace till

         The end of the Six Hundred and Twelfth Night.

Then said she:—­I have heard, O auspicious King, that Sidi Nu’uman continued his story saying:—­But when I beheld Aminah my bride enter the cemetery, I stood without and close to the wall over which I peered so that I could espy her well but she could not discover me.  Then what did I behold but Aminah sitting with a Ghul![FN#262] Thy Highness wotteth well that Ghuls be of the race of devils; to wit, they are unclean spirits which inhabit ruins and which terrify solitary wayfarers and at times seizing them feed upon their flesh; and if by day they find not any traveller to eat they go by night to the graveyards and dig out and devour dead bodies.  So I was sore amazed and terrified to see my wife thus seated with a Ghul.  Then the twain dug up from the grave a corpse which had been newly buried, and the Ghul and my wife Aminah tore off pieces of the flesh which she ate making merry the while and chatting with her companion but inasmuch as I stood at some distance I could not hear what it was they said.  At this sight I trembled with exceeding fear.  And when they had made an end of eating they cast the bones into the pit and thereover heaped up the earth e’en as it was before.  Leaving them thus engaged in their foul and fulsome work, I hastened home; and, allowing the street-door to remain half-open as my bride had done, I reached