many bows parted with him at the door. My mind was
uneasy, and I remained some time in my concealment; at length,
however, hunger, which I feared more than blows, drove me in, and
ashamed and with downcast head, I walked in before my father.

"Thou hast, as I hear, insulted the good Muck," said he with a very
serious tone. "I will tell thee the history of this Muck, and then I
am sure thou wilt ridicule him no more. But first, thou shalt receive
thy allowance." The allowance was five-and-twenty lashes, which he
took care to count only too honestly. He thereupon took a long
pipe-stem, unscrewed the amber mouthpiece, and beat me more severely
than he had ever done before.

When the five-and-twenty were all made up, he commanded me to attend,
and told me the following story of Little Muck.

* * * * *

The father of Little Muck, who is properly called Mukrah, lived here
in Nicea, a respectable, but poor man. He kept himself almost as
retired as his son does now. The latter he could not endure, because
he was ashamed of his dwarfish figure, and let him therefore grow up
in perfect ignorance. When the Little Muck was still in his
seventeenth year, a merry child, his father, a grave man, kept
continually reproaching him, that he, who ought long before to have
trodden down the shoes of infancy, was still so stupid and childish.

The old man, however, one day had a bad fall, from the effects of
which he died, and Little Muck was left behind, poor and ignorant. His
cruel relations, to whom the deceased owed more than he could pay,
turned the poor fellow out of the house, and advised him to go forth
into the world, and seek his fortune. Muck answered that he was all
ready, only asking them for his father's dress, which they willingly
granted him. His father had been a large, portly man, and the garments
on that account did not fit him. Muck, however, soon hit upon an
expedient; he cut off what was too long, and then put them on. He
seemed, however, to have forgotten that he must also take from their
width; hence the strange dress that he wears at the present day; the
huge turban, the broad girdle, the wide breeches, the blue cloak, all
these he has inherited from his father, and worn ever since. The long
Damascus dagger of his father, too, he attached to his girdle, and
seizing a little staff, set out from the door.

Gayly he wandered, the whole day, for he had set out to seek his
fortune: if