and vizier's word; he is a truthful man, but alas! the purse does
belong to me and that rascal of a Said stole it. I would give a
thousand tomans if he was in this room now."

"What did you do with this Said?" asked the caliph. "Speak up! where
shall we have to send for him, that he may come and make confession
before me?"

"I banished him to a desert island," said the police justice.

"O Said! my son, my son!" cried the unhappy father.

"Indeed, then he acknowledged the crime, did he?" inquired Haroun.

The police justice turned pale. He rolled his eyes about restlessly,
and finally said: "If I remember rightly--yes."

"You are not certain about it, then?" continued the caliph in a
terrible voice; "then we will ask the young man himself. Step forth,
Said, and you Kalum-Bek, to begin with, will count out one thousand
gold pieces, as Said is now in the room."

Kalum and the police justice thought it was a ghost that stood before
them. They prostrated themselves and cried: "Mercy! Mercy!" Benezar,
half-fainting with joy, fell into the arms of his long-lost son. But,
with great severity of manner, the caliph said: "Police Justice, here
stands Said; did he confess?"

"No," whined the justice; "I listened only to Kalum's testimony,
because he was a respectable man."

"Did I place you as a judge over all that you might listen only to the
people of rank?" demanded Haroun-al-Raschid, with noble scorn. "I will
banish you for ten years to a desert island in the middle of the sea;
there you can reflect on justice. And you, miserable wretch, who bring
the dying back to life, not in order to rescue them, but to make them
your slaves--you will pay down, as I said before, the thousand tomans
that you promised if Said were only present to be called as witness."

Kalum congratulated himself at having got out of a very bad scrape so
easily, and was just going to thank the kind caliph, when Haroun
continued: "For the perjury you committed about the hundred gold
pieces, you will receive a hundred lashes on the soles of your feet.
Further than this Said will have the choice of taking your shop and its
contents and you as a porter, or of contenting himself with ten gold
pieces for every day's work he did for you."

"Let the wretch go, Caliph!" cried the youth; "I would not take
anything that ever belonged to him."

"No," replied Haroun, "I prefer that you should be compensated. I will
choose for you the ten gold pieces a day, a