When he had written, signed, and delivered the paper to prince Amgrad, he put the lady’s body and head in a bag, took it on his shoulder, and went out with it from one street to another, taking the way to the sea-side; but he had not gone far before he was met by one of the judges of the city, going the rounds in person, as was usual for the chief magistrates to do there.  Bahader was stopped by the judge’s followers, who, opening the bag, found the body of a murdered lady, bundled up with the head.  The judge, who knew the master of the horse notwithstanding his disguise, took him home to his house; and, not daring to put him to death without telling the king, because of his quality, he conveyed him to court as soon as it was day.  As soon as the king had heard from the judge what a foul action the master of the horse had been guilty of, as appeared by the circumstances of the matter, he upbraided him in these words:  Is it thus, then, that you rob and murder my subjects, and then would throw their dead bodies into the sea to hide your villany?  Let us rid the world of such a monster; go hang him up immediately!

Innocent as Bahader was, he received his sentence of death with perfect resignation, and said not a word to justify himself.  The judge escorted him to his house; and, while the gallows was preparing, sent a crier to publish throughout the city, that at noon the master of the horse was to be hanged for committing a murder.

Prince Amgrad, who had in vain expected Bahader’s return, was in a terrible consternation when he heard the crier publish the approaching execution of the master of the horse.  If, said he to himself, somebody must die for the death of such a wicked woman, it is I, and not Bahader; I will never let an innocent man be punished for the guilty:  and, without deliberating any more, hastened to the place of execution, whither the people were running from all parts.

When Amgrad saw the judge bringing Bahader to the gibbet, he went up to him, and said, I am come to tell you, and to assure you, that the master of the horse, whom you are leading to execution, is wholly innocent of the lady’s death:  I am guilty of the crime, if it is one to have killed the most detestable of women, who would have murdered Bahader.  So he told him the affair as it had happened.

The prince having informed the judge how he met her coming out of the bath; how she was the cause of going into the master of the horse’s house of pleasure, and what had passed till the moment in which he was forced to cut off her head to save Bahader’s life; the judge ordered the execution to be stopped, and conducted Amgrad to the king, taking the master of the horse with them.

The king had a mind to hear the story from Amgrad himself; and the prince, the better to prove his own and the master of the horse’s innocence, embraced that opportunity to discover his quality, with all the accidents that had befallen him and his brother Assad, before and after their departure from the capital city of the isle of Ehene to that time.