In the mean time, the maid told the doctor, that a man and woman waited for him at the door, desiring he would come down and look at a sick man whom they had brought with them, and clapped into his hand the money she had received.  The doctor was transported with joy; being paid beforehand, he thought it must needs be a good patient, and should not be neglected.  “Light, light,” cried he to the maid; “follow me quickly.”  As he spoke, he hastily ran towards the head of the stairs without waiting for a light, and came against the corpse with so much violence that he precipitated it to the bottom, and had nearly fallen with it.  “Bring me a light,” cried he to the maid; “quick, quick.”  At last she brought one, and he went down stairs with her; but when he saw that what he had kicked down was a dead man, he was so frightened, that he invoked Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Esdras, and all the other prophets of his nation.  “Unhappy man that I am,” said he, “why did I attempt to come without a light!  I have killed the poor fellow who was brought to me to be cured:  doubtless I am the cause of his death, and unless Esdras’s ass come to assist me, I am ruined:  Mercy on me, they will be here out of hand, and drag me out of my house for a murderer.”

Notwithstanding the perplexity and confusion into which he was thrown, he had the precaution to shut his door, for fear any one passing by should observe the accident of which he reckoned himself to be the author.  He then took the corpse into his wife’s chamber, who was ready to swoon at the sight.  “Alas,” cried she, “we are utterly ruined and undone, unless we can devise some expedient to get the corpse out of our house this night.  If we harbour it till morning we are lost.  What a deplorable misfortune is this!  What have you done to kill this man?” “That is not now the question,” replied the Jew; “our business at present is, to find a remedy for the evil which threatens us.”

The doctor and his wife consulted how to dispose of the corpse that night.  The doctor racked his brain in vain, he could not think of any stratagem to relieve his embarrassment; but his wife, who was more fertile in invention, said, “A thought is just come into my head; let us carry the corpse to the terrace of our house, and throw it down the chimney of our Mussulmaun neighbour.”

This Mussulmaun was one of the sultan’s purveyors for furnishing oil, butter, and articles of a similar nature, and had a magazine in his house, where the rats and mice made prodigious havoc.

The Jewish doctor approving the proposed expedient, the wife and he took the little hunch-back up to the roof of the house; and clapping ropes under his arm-pits, let him down the chimney into the purveyor’s chamber so dexterously that he stood upright against the wall, as if he had been alive.  When they found he had reached the bottom, they pulled up the ropes, and left the corpse in that posture.  They were scarcely got down into their chamber, when the purveyor,