'Do not waste the precious stones of your eloquence upon a barber,' said the Sheikh of the beggars, 'but reserve your breath and the rich treasures of your speech until you are brought as a plucked bird before the people of Riad. Moreover we only wish to shave off your beard, but if you are restless some of your hide will certainly be removed also, whereby you will be hurt and it will be still harder for your friends to recognise you to-morrow. It is also useless to shout and scream as though you were driving camels, for you are in the cellar of my house which is at a good distance from other habitations, on the borders of the city.' So Abdullah saw that there was no escape, and that his fate was about his neck, and he sat still as they had placed him, while the one-eyed hunchback shaved off his beard and the hair on his upper lip and his eyebrows, and the lock at the back of his head. When this was done the blind man put out his hand and felt Abdullah's face. 'Surely,' he said, 'this is not a man's head, but the round end of a walking-staff, rubbed smooth by much use.' They also tied his hands under his arm-pits and put upon him a ragged shirt with sleeves so that he seemed to have lost both arms at the elbow. 'This is very well done,' said the hunchback turning his head from side to side in order to see all with his one eye. 'But what shall we do with the woman? Let us cast lots for her, and he who wins her shall marry her, and we will hold the feast immediately, for we have not yet supped and there is some of the camel's meat which we received to-day at the palace.' 'O my brothers,' answered the Sheikh of the beggars, 'let us do nothing unlawful in our haste. For this woman is certainly one of Abdullah's wives, as you may see by her clothes, and unless he divorces her none of us can take her for ourselves, seeing that she is the wife of a believer. Take the sack from her head, however, and if she deafens us with her screaming we can put it on again. But you must by no means put her to shame by taking the veil from her face, for she may be an honest wife, though her husband be a dog. If she has done well, we shall find it out, and no harm will have come to her; but if she is a sharer in this fellow's plans, her punishment will be grievous, since she will be the wife of an outcast, having neither beard nor eyebrows and rejected by all men.' Some of the beggars murmured at this, but most of them praised their Sheikh's wisdom, and would indeed have feared greatly to break the holy law, being chiefly devout men who prayed daily in the mosque and listened to the Khotbah on Friday. They therefore placed Almasta in one corner of the cellar and Abdullah in another, so that the two could not converse together, and then they took out such food as they had and began to eat their supper, laughing and talking over the jest and anticipating the reward which awaited them for saving Khaled.