e and go into a caravansary. He was,
however, much changed, wore a beautiful costume, a dagger sword, and
splendid turban.

When Kalum-Bek heard this, he shouted with an oath: "He has stolen from
me, and bought clothes with the money. Oh, I am a ruined man!" Then he
ran to the chief of police, and as he was known to be a relative of
Messour, the head chamberlain, he had no difficulty in having two
policemen sent out to arrest Said. Said sat before a caravansary,
conversing quietly with a merchant whom he had found there, about a
journey to Balsora, his native city, when suddenly he was seized by
some men, and his hands tied behind his back before he could offer any
resistance. He asked them whose authority they were acting under, and
they replied that they were obeying the orders of the chief of police,
on complaint of his rightful master, Kalum-Bek. The ugly little
merchant then came up, abused and jeered at Said, felt in the young
man's pocket, and to the astonishment of the bystanders, and with a
shout of triumph, drew out a large purse filled with gold.

"Look! He has robbed me of all that, the wicked fellow!" cried he, and
the people looked with abhorrence at the prisoner, saying: "What! so
young, so handsome, and yet so wicked! To the court, to the court, that
he may get the bastinado!" Thus they dragged him away, while a large
procession of people of all ranks followed in their wake, shouting:
"See, that is the handsome clerk of the bazar; he stole from his master
and ran away; he took two hundred gold pieces!"

The chief of police received the prisoner with a dark look. Said tried
to speak, but the official told him to be still, and listened only to
the little merchant. He held up the purse, and asked Kalum whether this
gold had been stolen from him. Kalum-Bek swore that it had; but his
perjury, while it gained him the gold, did not help to restore to him
his clerk, who was worth a thousand gold pieces to him, for the judge
said: "In accordance with a law that my all-powerful master, the
caliph, has recently made, every theft of over a hundred gold pieces
that transpires in the bazar, is punished with banishment for life to a
desert island. This thief comes at just the right time; he makes the
twentieth of his class, and so completes the lot; to-morrow they will
be put on a vessel and taken out to sea."

Said was in despair. He besought the officers to listen to him, to
let him speak only one word with the c