his eyes, blinding him for ever.  But, having thus effected his revenge as he thought, in groping his way out of the house he stumbled into the well and broke his foot.  The tradesman, taking him for the geomancer, come for more gold, upbraided him for his insatiable avarice, and the man, in his turn, supposing him to have been thrown into the well by the tradesman, replied, “Be satisfied; I have punished him who cast you into this place,” but as he began to howl from the pain of his broken foot, the tradesman knew that he was not the geomancer.  Next morning the tradesman’s son arrives from a long trading journey, with much gold and merchandise and many slaves.  On entering his father’s house he is astounded to perceive the open well and by the side of it a vast heap of treasure and a man holding both hands to his eyes and wailing bitterly, lamenting the covetousness which had caused him the loss of his eyesight.  The young man sends a slave down into the well and the first person drawn up is the tradesman, who is both surprised and overjoyed to behold his son once more, and tells him the whole story.  His enemy is then taken out and is dismayed to find that he has blinded the wrong man.  Both the geomancer and the tradesman’s enemy are pardoned, but the latter dies soon after, while the geomancer retires to a cave in the mountains, where every morning and evening two small loaves are thrown in to him by an unknown hand, and during the rest of his life he never ceased to repeat this distich: 

          If you possess one barley grain of justice,
          You will never have half a grain of sorrow.

But much more closely resembling the story of Baba Adbullah is a tale in the Persian romance which recounts the imaginary adventures of Hatim Ta’i.  A blind man is confined in a cage which is suspended from a branch of a tree, and constantly exclaims, “Do evil to none; if you do, evil will overtake you.”  Hatim having promised to mend his condition and relieve him, he relates his history as follows: 

“I am by occupation a merchant, and my name is Hamir.  When I became of age my father had finished the building of this city, and he called the same after my name.  Shortly after, my father departed on a sea-voyage, and left me in charge of the city.  I was a free hearted and social young man, and so in a short time expended all the property left under my care by my father.  Thus I became surrounded with poverty and want, and as I knew that my father had hidden treasures somewhere in the house, I resolved to discover them if possible.  I searched everywhere, but found nothing, and, to complete my woe, I received the news of my father’s death, the ship in which he sailed being wrecked.