ther was
spendthrift, and would not consent to waste what he had found.
Nevertheless, he was generous and open-hearted, and grudged his friend
nothing; so, though he did not care for a wild life himself, he gave Ali
a piece of gold to spend as he chose.

By morning every copper of what had been given to the elder fagot-maker
was gone, and he had never had such a good time in his life before. All
that day and for a week the head of Ali was so full of the memory of the
merry night that he had enjoyed that he could think of nothing else.
At last, one evening, he asked Abdallah for another piece of gold, and
Abdallah gave it to him, and by the next morning it had vanished in the
same way that the other had flown. By-and-by Ali borrowed a third piece
of money, and then a fourth and then a fifth, so that by the time that
six months had passed and gone he had spent thirty of the hundred pieces
that had been found, and in all that time Abdallah had used not so much
as a pistareen.

But when Ali came for the thirty-and-first loan, Abdallah refused to
let him have any more money. It was in vain that the elder begged and
implored--the younger abided by what he had said.

Then Ali began to put on a threatening front. "You will not let me have
the money?" he said.

"No, I will not."

"You will not?"

"No!"

"Then you shall!" cried Ali; and, so saying, caught the younger
fagot-maker by the throat, and began shaking him and shouting, "Help!
Help! I am robbed! I am robbed!" He made such an uproar that half a
hundred men, women, and children were gathered around them in less than
a minute. "Here is ingratitude for you!" cried Ali. "Here is wickedness
and thievery! Look at this wretch, all good men, and then turn away
your eyes! For twelve years have I lived with this young man as a father
might live with a son, and now how does he repay me? He has stolen all
that I have in the world--a purse of seventy sequins of gold."

All this while poor Abdallah had been so amazed that he could do nothing
but stand and stare like one stricken dumb; whereupon all the people,
thinking him guilty, dragged him off to the judge, reviling him and
heaping words of abuse upon him.

Now the judge of that town was known far and near as the "Wise Judge";
but never had he had such a knotty question as this brought up before
him, for by this time Abdallah had found his speech, and swore with a
great outcry that the money belonged to him.

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