t from terror.

"If you please, sir," said he, "I am only a little tailor."

The evil being lifted up both hands and eyes. "How wonderful," he cried,
"that one little tailor can undo in a moment that which took the wise
Solomon a whole day to accomplish, and in the doing of which he wellnigh
broke the sinews of his heart!" Then, turning to the Tailor, who stood
trembling like a rabbit, "Hark thee!" said he. "For two thousand years
I lay there in that bottle, and no one came nigh to aid me. Thou hast
liberated me, and thou shalt not go unrewarded. Every morning at the
seventh hour I will come to thee, and I will perform for thee whatever
task thou mayst command me. But there is one condition attached to
the agreement, and woe be to thee if that condition is broken. If any
morning I should come to thee, and thou hast no task for me to do, I
shall wring thy neck as thou mightest wring the neck of a sparrow."
Thereupon he was gone in an instant, leaving the little Tailor half dead
with terror.

Now it happened that the prime-minister of that country had left an
order with the Tailor for a suit of clothes, so the next morning, when
the Demon came, the little man set him to work on the bench, with his
legs tucked up like a journey-man tailor. "I want," said he, "such and
such a suit of clothes."

"You shall have them," said the Demon; and thereupon he began snipping
in the air, and cutting most wonderful patterns of silks and satins out
of nothing at all, and the little Tailor sat and gaped and stared. Then
the Demon began to drive the needle like a spark of fire--the like was
never seen in all the seven kingdoms, for the clothes seemed to make
themselves.

At last, at the end of a little while, the Demon stood up and brushed
his hands. "They are done," said he, and thereupon he instantly
vanished. But the Tailor cared little for that, for upon the bench there
lay such a suit of clothes of silk and satin stuff, sewed with threads
of gold and silver and set with jewels, as the eyes of man never saw
before; and the Tailor packed them up and marched off with them himself
to the prime-minister.

The prime-minister wore the clothes to court that very day, and before
evening they were the talk of the town. All the world ran to the Tailor
and ordered clothes of him, and his fortune was made. Every day the
Demon created new suits of clothes out of nothing at all, so that the
Tailor grew as rich as a Jew, and held his head up i