have I done?  I only dammed the waterway that the warm air might abide in her belly and comfort her in the cold season.”  So the father knew that his son had played this trick in order to have his will of her.  Hereat he flew into a fury[FN#590] and forthright divorced her, giving her the contingent dowry; and she went her ways.  Then the man said in his mind, “I shall never get the better of this boy until I marry two wives and ever keep them with each other, so that he may not cozen the twain.”  Now after a couple of weeks he espoused a fair woman fairer than his former and during the next month he wived with a second and cohabited with the two brides.  Then quoth the youth in his mind, “My papa hath wedded two perfect beauties and here am I abiding in single blessedness.  By Allah, there is no help but that I play a prank upon both of them!” Then he fell to seeking a contrivance but he could not hit upon aught for that whenever he entered the house he found his two step-mothers sitting together and thus he could not avail to address either.  But his father never fared forth from home or returned to it without warning his wives and saying, “Have a care of yourselves against that son of mine.  He is a whoremonger and he hath made my life distraught, for whenever I take to myself a wife he serveth some sleight upon her; then he laugheth at her and so manageth that I must divorce her.”  At such times the two wives would cry, “Wallahi, an he come near us and ask us of amorous mercy, we will slap him with our slippers.”  Still the man would insist, saying, “Be ye on your guard against him,” and they would reply, “We are ever on our guard.”  Now one day the women said to him, “O man, our wheat is finished,” and said he, “Be ye watchful while I fare to the Bazar in our market-town which lieth hard by and fetch you the corn.”  So he left them and made for the town,—­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 how 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 Eight Hundred and Thirty-fifth 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 worth celebrating, that when the father had gone forth and was making for the market-town, his son happened to meet him, and the two wives went up to the terrace wishing to see if their husband be gone or not.  Now by the decree of the Decreer the man had in some carelessness forgotten his papooshes so he turned to the youth who was following him and