by her, put on my best apparel, and took with me a hundred pieces of gold.  I followed her; she brought me to this house, where the black has since kept me by force, and I have been three years here to my great sorrow.”  “By the trade which that cursed black followed,” replied my brother, “he must have gathered together a vast deal of riches.”  “There is so much,” said she “that you will be made for ever, if you can carry them off:  follow me, and you shall see them.”  Alnaschar followed her to a chamber, where she shewed him several coffers full of gold, which he beheld with admiration.  “Go,” said she, “and fetch people to carry it all off.”  My brother went out, got ten men together, and brought them with him, but was much surprised to find the gate open, the lady and the coffers gone, for she being more diligent than he, had conveyed them all off and disappeared.  However, being resolved not to return empty-handed, he carried off all the furniture of the house, which was a great deal more than enough to make up the five hundred pieces of gold he had been robbed of; but when he went out of the house, he forgot to shut the gate.  The neighbours, who saw my brother and the porters come and go, went and acquainted the magistrate, for they looked upon my brother’s conduct as suspicious.  Alnaschar slept well enough all night, but the next morning, when he came out of his house, twenty of the magistrate’s men seized him.  “Come along with us,” said they, “our master would speak with you.”  My brother prayed them to have patience for a moment, and offered them a sum of money to let him escape; but instead of listening to him, they bound him, and forced him to go with them.  They met in the street an old acquaintance of my brother’s, who stopped them awhile, asked them why they had seized my brother, offered them a considerable sum to let him escape, and tell the magistrate they could not find him, but in vain.

When the officers brought him before the magistrate, he asked him where he had the goods which he had carried home the preceding evening?  “Sir,” replied Alnaschar, “I am ready to tell you all the truth; but allow me first to have recourse to your clemency, and to beg your promise, that I shall not be punished.”  “I give it you,” said the magistrate.  My brother then told him the whole story without disguise, from the period the old woman came into his house to say her prayers, to the time the lady made her escape, after he had killed the black, the Greek slave, and the old woman:  and as for what he had carried to his house, he prayed the judge to leave him part of it, for the five hundred pieces of gold of which he had been robbed.

The judge, without promising any thing, sent his officers to bring off the whole, and having put the goods into his own warehouse, commanded my brother to quit the town immediately, and never to return, for he was afraid, if he had stayed in the city, he would have found some way to represent this injustice to the caliph.  In the mean time, Alnaschar obeyed without murmuring, and left that town to go to another.  By the way, he met with highwaymen, who stripped him naked; and when the ill news was brought to me, I carried him a suit, and brought him secretly into the town, where I took the like care of him as I did of his other brothers.