“Peace!” cried Ahmed. “Let us have the tale.” “Yea, before he thinks him to plead for more anna,” muttered Hadjaz, the sweeper, softly. But Gazzar, not to be robbed of this evidence of interest, was already astir. Even as they talked he held out the tambour, crying: “Anna, anna, anna!” But so great was the opposition that he dared not persist. “Dog!” cried Waidi. “Wilt thou never be satisfied? There is another for thee, but come no more.” “Thou miser!” said Haifa, still greatly interested, “tell thy tale and be done!” “The thief has rupees and to spare, I warrant,” added Scudi, contributing yet another anna. And Zad-el-Din and Ahmed, because they were lustful of the great beauty of Yanee, each added an anna to his takings. “Berate me not, O friends,” pleaded Gazzar tactfully, hiding his anna in his cloak, “for I am as poor as thou seest—a son of the road, a beggar, a wanderer, with nowhere to lay my head. Other than my tales I have nothing.” But seeing scant sympathy in the faces of his hearers, he resumed. “Now at the time that Abou was in charge of the dark bazaar it chanced that the caliph, who annually arranged for the departure of his daughter for the mountains which are beyond Azol in Bactria, where he maintained a summer palace of great beauty, sent forth a vast company mounted upon elephants and camels out of Ullar and Cerf and horses of the rarest blood from Taif. This company was caparisoned and swathed in silks and thin wool and the braided and spun cloth of Esher and Bar with their knitted threads of gold. And it made a glorious spectacle indeed, and all paused to behold. But it also chanced that as this cavalcade passed through the streets of Baghdad, Abou, hearing a great tumult and the cries of the multitude and the drivers and the tramp of the horses’ feet and the pad of the camels’, came to the door of his bazaar, his robes of silk about him, a turban of rare cloth knitted with silver threads upon his head. He had now grown to be a youth of eighteen summers. His hair was as black as the wing of the duck, his eyes large and dark and sad from many thoughts as is the pool into which the moon falls. His face and hands were tinted as with henna when it is spread very thin, and his manners were graceful and languorous. As he paused within his doorway he looked wonderingly at the great company as it moved and disappeared about the curves of the long street. And it could not but occur to him, trained as he was, how rich would be the prize could one but seize upon such a company and take all the wealth that was here and the men and women as slaves.