rty. "Shame upon thee!" exclaimed Eliezer to the citizen. "Is
this the way you act towards strangers?" To this remonstrance the man
replied by picking up a stone and striking Eliezer with it on the
forehead with such force as to cause the blood to flow down his face. On
seeing the blood the citizen caught hold of Eliezer and demanded to be
paid his fee for having freed him of impure blood. "What!" said Eliezer,
"am I to pay thee for wounding me?" "Such is our law," returned the
citizen. Eliezer refused to pay, and the man brought him before the
judge, to whom he made his complaint. The judge then decreed: "Thou must
pay this man his fee, since he has let thy blood; such is our law."
"There, then," said Eliezer, striking the judge with a stone, and
causing him to bleed, "pay my fee to this man, I want it not," and then
departed from the court.[66]

[66] There are two Italian stories which bear some
resemblance to this queer legend: In the fourth novel of
Arienti an advocate is fined for striking his opponent
in court, and "takes his change" by repeating the
offence; and in the second novel of Sozzini, Scacazzone,
after dining sumptuously at an inn, and learning from
the waiter that the law of that town imposed a fine of
ten livres for a blow on the face, provokes the landlord
so that he gets a slap from him on the cheek, upon which
he tells Boniface to pay himself out of the fine he
should have had to pay for the blow if charged before
the magistrate, and give the rest of the money to the
waiter.--A similar story is told in an Arabian
collection, of a half-witted fellow and the kazi.

_Abraham and Ishmael's Wife._

Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, was given as a slave to Abraham, by her
father, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who said: "My daughter had better be a
slave in the house of Abraham than mistress in any other house." Her son
Ishmael, it is said, took unto himself a wife of the daughters of Moab.
Three years afterwards Abraham set out to visit his son, having solemnly
promised Sarah (who, it thus appears, was still jealous of her former
handmaid) that he would not alight from his camel. He reached Ishmael's
house about noontide, and found his wife alone. "Where is Ishmael?"
inquired the patriarch. "He is gone into the wilderness with his mother
to gather dates and other fruits." "Give me, I pray thee, a little b