ad lost anything, but poor because he was
discontented and discontented because he thought he was poor. He said:
"I want a mine of diamonds!" So he lay awake all night, and early in
the morning sought out the priest. Now I know from experience that
a priest when awakened early in the morning is cross. He awoke that
priest out of his dreams and said to him, "Will you tell me where I
can find diamonds?" The priest said, "Diamonds? What do you want with
diamonds?" "I want to be immensely rich," said Al Hafed, "but I don't
know where to go." "Well," said the priest, "if you will find a river
that runs over white sand between high mountains, in those sands you
will always see diamonds." "Do you really believe that there is such a
river?" "Plenty of them, plenty of them; all you have to do is just go
and find them, then you have them." Al Hafed said, "I will go." So he
sold his farm, collected his money at interest, left his family in
charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. He began
very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he
went around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last
when his money was all spent, and he was in rags, wretchedness and
poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay in Barcelona, Spain, when
a tidal wave came rolling in through the Pillars of Hercules and the
poor afflicted, suffering man could not resist the awful temptation to
cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming
crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that very sad story, he stopped the
camel I was riding and went back to fix the baggage on one of the
other camels, and I remember thinking to myself, "Why did he reserve
that for his _particular friends_?" There seemed to be no beginning,
middle or end--nothing to it. That was the first story I ever heard
told or read in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had
but one chapter of that story and the hero was dead. When the guide
came back and took up the halter of my camel again, he went right on
with the same story. He said that Al Hafed's successor led his camel
out into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose down into
the clear water of the garden brook Al Hafed's successor noticed a
curious flash of light from the sands of the shallow stream, and
reaching in he pulled out a black stone having an eye of light that
reflected all the colors of the r