m in an astonished way before replying: "Now for the first
time I understand what before was incomprehensible to me. You must know
that I was called Fatima in the castle, and it was to me you gave the
note and medicine." My brother requested her to give him news of his
sister and Zoraide, and learned that they were both in the castle, but,
in accordance with a custom of Thiuli's, had received other names, and
were now called Mirza and Nurmahal.

When the freed slave, Fatima, saw that my brother was so cast down by
this mistake, she consoled him with the assurance that she could point
out another way by which both of the young girls might be rescued.
Aroused by what she said, he begged her to tell him her plan, to which
she replied--

"For some five months I have been Thiuli's slave; yet from the first I
have planned to escape, but it was too much of a task for me to attempt
alone. In the inner court of the castle you must have noticed a
fountain that throws the water in a cascade from ten pipes. This
fountain impressed me strongly, because I remembered a similar one in
my father's house, the water of which was brought through a large
aqueduct. In order to learn whether this fountain was built in the same
way, I one day praised its beauty to Thiuli, and asked who had
constructed it. 'I built it myself,' answered he; 'and what you see
here is the least part of the work, as the water is brought from a
brook, a thousand paces away, through an arched viaduct at least high
enough for a man to walk in. And the construction of all this I
directed myself.'

"Since hearing this, I have often wished for the strength of a man to
pull out a stone in the side of the fountain, and thereby escape. I
will now show you the aqueduct, through which you can obtain entrance
to the castle at night, and set your sister free. But you ought to have
at least two men with you, in order to overpower the slaves who watch
the seraglio at night."

My brother Mustapha, although he had seen his plans twice frustrated,
plucked up courage once more at these words, and hoped, with Allah's
assistance, to carry out the scheme of the slave. He promised to see
that she arrived safely at her home if she would assist him to enter
the castle. But one point caused him some little perplexity: where
should he obtain two or three men upon whom he could depend? Just then
Orbasan's dagger occurred to him, and the promise he had received from
the bandit that, in ca