and they give him another hundred dollars warning him to be more careful with the money this time.  The weaver conceals the dollars in the ash-tub, again without the cognisance of his wife, who disposes of the ashes for a few pieces of soap.  At the end of the second year the students once more visit the wretched weaver, and on being informed of his loss, they throw a bit of lead at his feet, saying it’s of no use to give such a fool money, and go away in a great huff.  The weaver picks up the lead and places it on the window sill.  By-and-by a neighbour, who is a fisherman, comes in and asks for a bit of lead or some other heavy thing, for his net, and on receiving the lead thrown down by the students promises to give him in return the first large fish he catches.  The weaver does get a fine fish, which he immediately cuts open, and finds in its stomach a “large stone,” which he lays on the window-sill, where, as it becomes dark, the stone gives forth a brighter and brighter light, “just like a candle,” and then he places it so that it illuminates the whole apartment.  “That’s a cheap lamp,” quoth he to his wife:  “wouldst not like to dispose of it as thou didst the two hundred dollars?” The next evening a merchant happening to ride past the weaver’s house perceives the brilliant stone, and alighting from his horse, enters and looks at it, then offers ten dollars for it, but the weaver says the stone is not for sale.  “What! not even for twenty dollars?” “Not even for that.”  The merchant keeps on increasing his offers till he reaches a thousand dollars, which was about half its real value, for the stone was a diamond, and which the weaver accepts, and thus he becomes the richest man in all the village.  His wife, however, took credit to herself for his prosperity, often saying to him, “How well it was that I threw away the money twice, for thou hast me to thank for thy good luck!”—­and here the German story ends.  For the turban of the ropemaker and the kite that carried it off, with its precious lining, we have the heap of rags and the rag-collector; but the ashes exchanged for soap agrees with the Arabian story almost exactly.

The incident of the kite carrying off the poor ropemaker’s turban in which he had deposited the most part of the gold pieces that he received from the gentleman who believed that “money makes money”—­an unquestionable fact, in spite of our story—­is of very frequent occurrence in both Western and Eastern fictions.  My readers will recollect its exact parallel in the abstract of the romance of Sir Isumbras, cited in Appendix to the preceding volumes:  how the Knight, with his little son, after the soudan’s ship has sailed away with his wife, is bewildered in a forest, where they fall asleep, and in the morning at sunrise when he awakes, an eagle pounces down and carries off his scarlet mantle, in which he had tied up his scanty store of provisions together with the gold he had received from the soudan; and how many