with that I should relate to you on the coming night an the King
suffer me to survive?" Now when it was the next night and that
was

The Four Hundred and Twenty-seventh 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 the sons
of the Sultan made them ready for the march whereby they might
bring back the bird to whom the necklace belonged. So they took
them a sufficiency of provision and, farewelling their father,
set out for the city wherein they judged the bird might be. Such
was their case; but as regards their unhappy brother, when he
heard the news of their going he took with him a bittock of bread
and having bidden adieu to his mother mounted his lame garron and
followed upon the traces of his brethren for three days.
Presently he found himself in the midst of the wild and the wold,
and he ceased not faring therethrough till he came to a city
whose folk were all weeping and wailing and crying and keening.
So he accosted an aged man and said to him, "The Peace be upon
thee!" and when the other returned his salam and welcomed him he
asked saying, "O my uncle, tell me what causeth these groans and
this grief?" The other replied, "O my son, verily our city is
domineered over by a monstrous Lion who every year cometh about
this time and he hath already done on such wise for forty and
three years. Now he expecteth every twelvemonth as he appeareth