clothes and lay out the price upon his urgent needs; and when the
coin was finished he was forced to part with other portions of
his dress till little or nothing of it remained to him. Then, in
his sorest strait, he went to the Shaykh of the Masons and said
to him, "O master, my wish is to serve in this
industry;''[FN#217] and said he, "Welcome to thee." So the Kazi
worked through every day for a wage of five Faddahs. Such was his
case; but as regards his wife,--And Shahrazad was surprised by
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 this coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?" Now
when it was the next night and that was

The Three Hundred and Ninetieth 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 when the
Kazi went forth from his wife she threw a sherd[FN#218] behind
him and muttered, "Allah never bring thee back from thy journey."
Then she arose and threw open the rooms and noted all that was in
them of moneys and moveables and vaiselle and rarities, and she
fell to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and doling alms
to Fakirs saying, "This be the reward of him who mortifieth the
daughters of folk and devoureth their substance and shreddeth off