woman’s head fall from her body and bade her slave-girls pick up the pieces and cast them into the common privy of the palace.  So they did her bidding and wiped away the blood.  Now the Wazir abode expecting his nurse to return to him but she returned not; so next day he despatched another handmaid who went to my mother and said to her, “O my lady, our lord the Wazir sent thee a present of dress by his nurse; but she hath not come back to him.”  Hereupon my mother bade her Eunuchs take the slave and strangle her, then cast the corpse into the same house of easement where they had thrown the nurse.  They did her bidding; but she said in her mind, “Haply the Wazir will return from the road of unright:”  and she kept his conduct a secret.  He however fell every day to sending slave-girls with the same message and my mother to slaying each and every, nor deigned show him any signs of yielding.  But she, O our lord the Sultan, still kept her secret and did not acquaint our father therewith, always saying to herself, “Haply the Wazir will return to the road of right.”  And behold my father presently came back from hunting and sporting and pleasuring, when the Lords of the land met him and salam’d to him, and amongst them appeared the Minister whose case was changed.  Now some years after this, O King of the Age, our sire resolved upon a Pilgrimage to the Holy House of Meccah—­And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say.  Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, “How sweet and tasteful is thy tale, O sister mine, and enjoyable and delectable.”  Quoth she, “And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night an the sovran suffer me to survive?” Now when it was the next night and that was

The Three Hundred and Sixty-seventh Night,

Dunyazad said to her “Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night.”  She replied, “With love and good will!” It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the youngest sister continued to the Sultan:—­So our sire, O King of the Age, resolved upon a Pilgrimage to the Holy House of Meccah and stablished the same Wazir Viceregent in his stead to deal commandment and break off and carry out.  So he said in his heart, “Now have I won my will of the Sultan’s Harem.”  So the King gat him ready and fared forth to Allah’s Holy House after committing us to the charge of his Minister.  But when he had been gone ten days, and the Wazir knew that he must be far from the city where he had left behind him me and my sisters and my mother, behold, an Eunuch of the Minister’s came in to us and kissed ground before the Queen and said to her “Allah upon thee, O my lady, pity my lord the Wazir, for his heart is melted by thy love and his wits wander and his right mind; and he is