t formed on it, and grew to great size.

Toward the end of the year, the old dame was unable to pay her debts,
and her poverty so weighed upon her that she became ill. Sitting one
day at her door, feverish and tired, she saw that the melon was ripe,
and looked luscious; so she determined to try its unknown quality.
Taking a knife, she severed the melon from its stalk, and was
surprised to hear it chink in her hands. On cutting it in two, she
found it full of silver and gold pieces, with which she paid her debts
and bought supplies for many days.

Among her neighbours was a busybody who craftily found out how the old
woman had so suddenly become rich. Thinking there was no good reason
why she should not herself be equally fortunate, she washed clothes at
the pool, keeping a sharp lookout for birds until she managed to hit
and maim one of a flock that was flitting over the water. She then
took the disabled bird home, and treated it with care till its wing
healed and it flew away. Shortly afterward it came back with a seed in
its beak, laid it before her, and again took flight. The woman quickly
planted the seed, saw it come up and spread its leaves, made a trellis
for it, and had the gratification of seeing a melon form on its
stalk. In prospect of her future wealth, she ate rich food, bought
fine garments, and got so deeply into debt that, before the end of the
year, she was harried by duns. But the melon grew apace, and she was
delighted to find that, as it ripened, it became of vast size, and
that when she shook it there was a great rattling inside. At the end
of the year she cut it down, and divided it, expecting it to be a
coffer of coins; but there crawled out of it two old, lame, hungry
beggars, who told her they would remain and eat at her table as long
as they lived.

_The Iron Casket_

In Bagdad, in the little lane by the Golden Bridge, lived, ages ago, a
merchant named Kalif. He was a quiet, retiring man, who sat early and
late in his little shop, and went but once a year to Mosul or Shiraz,
where he bought embroidered robes in exchange for attar of roses.

On one of these journeys, chancing to have fallen a little in the rear
of his caravan, he heard roarings and trampling of horse's hoofs in
the thicket close by the roadside. Drawing his sword, which he wore on
account of thieves, he entered the thicket. On a little green,
surrounded by trees, he saw a horseman in a light blue mantle and a
turba