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Allah,’ rejoined I, ‘I will take nothing till I have made known to the Commander of the Faithful what happened to my other brothers, for I am a man of few words.’ Then I went on as follows:
STORY OF THE BARBER’S FOURTH BROTHER.
‘My fourth brother, the one-eyed, was a butcher at Baghdad, who sold meat and reared rams; and the notables and men of wealth used to buy meat of him, so that he amassed much wealth and got him cattle and houses. He fared thus a long while, till one day, as he was sitting in his shop, there came up to him an old man with a long beard, who laid down some money and said, “Give me meat for this.” So he gave him his money’s worth of meat, and the old man went away. My brother looked at the money he had paid him, and seeing that it was brilliantly white, laid it aside by itself. The old man continued to pay him frequent visits for five months, and my brother threw the money he received from him into a chest by itself. At the end of this time, he thought to take out the money to buy sheep; so he opened the chest, but found in it nothing but white paper, cut round. When he saw this, he buffeted his face and cried out, till the folk came round him and he told them his story, at which they wondered. Then he rose, as of his wont, and slaughtering a ram, hung it up within the shop; after which he cut off some of the meat and hung it up outside, saying the while, “Would God that pestilent old man would come!” And surely before long up came the old man, with his money in his hand; whereupon my brother rose and caught hold of him, crying out, “Come to my help, O Muslims, and hear what befell me with this scoundrel!” When the old man heard this, he said to him, “An thou loose me not, I will expose thee before the folk!” “In what wilt thou
