once walked on two legs,' said she,
looking down upon the fawning animal, 'have you not? If so, wag your
tail.'

Sid thumped the floor most furiously with the stump of it, whereupon she
poured liquid into a phial, threw it into his face, and he stood up once
more a man,--Sid Norman, lost and saved by a woman, his eyes beaming one
moment with the tenderest gratitude, but on the next flashing with the
most deadly revenge. Heaven and hell, the one with its joyous sunshine,
the other with its lurid lights, appeared to struggle and mix up their
flashes on Sid Norman's countenance, till gratitude, that rarest grace,
was quenched, and hell triumphed.

'Than all the nectar ever served in golden cups and brewed by houries in
Mahomet's paradise, revenge is sweeter,' he murmured to himself.

'Stay,' said Xarifa, who divined his thoughts; 'you will transform
yourself back again. There will be no transmigration of soul for you, if
you are lost by your own sorcery. Let dogs delight to bark and bite.'

'Hold your tongue, Xarifa,' said the mother, who was not so amiable.
'The man shall have revenge. Since he has trotted about so long on all
fours, he must be paid for it. It is not revenge, it is sheer justice.'

'True as the Koran,' exclaimed Sid Norman, who was becoming infatuate
again, and would have fallen down at the knees of this new charmer and
worshiped her. The fact is, that he was too easily transformed, and
submitted too quickly to the latest magic; otherwise he would have
always walked erect, instead of wearing fur on his back, and a tail at
the end of it. A coat of tar and feathers would have been a mere
circumstance compared with such an indignity. Well, it was the fault,
perhaps it should rather be called the misfortune, of character.

'Sidi Norman,' said the lady, fixing upon him an amorous glance, 'you
shall not only have revenge, but the richest kind of it. You have a bone
to pick with your wife. She was brought up in the same school of magic
that I was, hence I hate her. She has the secret of the same rouge, and
concocts the same potions and love-filters; but she shall smart for it.
Excellent man! injured husband! Monopolize to yourself all the
whip-cords of Bagdad.'

Sid Norman kneeled and kissed her hand. Xarifa looked up from her
embroidery and frowned.

The benefactress withdrew to consult her books, but returned presently.

'Your wife,' she said, 'has gone out shopping, also to leave some cards,
to ful