"Truly," said he, "there is no necessity that I should fast like the common people. I will rather provide myself with a vase into which I will drop a stone every day. When there are thirty pebbles in the vase, I shall know that Ramadan is over, and I shall then be able to keep the feast of Bairam at the proper season." Accordingly, on the first day of the month the Khoja dropped a stone into the vase, and so he continued to do day by day. Now the Khoja had a little daughter, and it came to pass that one day the child, having observed the pebbles in the vase, went out and gathered a handful and added them to the rest. But her father was not aware of it. [Illustration: THE KHOJA COUNTS.] On the twenty-fifth day of Ramadan the Khoja met at the Bazaar with certain of his neighbours, who said to him, "Be good enough, most learned Khoja, to tell us what day of the month it is." "Wait a bit, and I will see," replied the Khoja. Saying this, he ran to his house, emptied the vase, and began to count the stones. To his amazement he found that there were a hundred and twenty! "If I say as much as this," thought the Khoja, "they will call me a fool. Even half would be more than could be believed." So he went back to the Bazaar and said, "It is the full forty-fifth of the month, quite that." "O Khoja!" the neighbours replied, "there are only thirty days in a complete month, and do you tell us to-day is the forty-fifth?" "O neighbours!" answered the Khoja, "believe me, I speak with moderation. If you look into the vase, you will find that according to its account to-day is the one hundred and twentieth." _Tale_ 8.--The Khoja and the Thief. One day a thief got into the Khoja's house, and the Khoja watched him. The thief poked here, there, and everywhere, and after collecting all that he could carry, he put the load on his back and went off. The Khoja then came out, and hastily gathering up the few things which were left of his property, he put them on his own back, and hurried after the thief. At last he arrived before the door of the thief's house, at which he knocked. "What do you want?" said the thief. "Why, we are moving into this house, aren't we?" said the Khoja. "I've brought the rest of the things." _Tale_ 9.--The Bird of Prey and the Piece of Soap. One day the Khoja went with his wife to wash clothes at the head of a spring. They had placed the soap beside them on the ground, and were just about to begin, when a black bird of prey swooped suddenly down, and snatching up the soap, flew away with it, believing it to be some kind of food. "Run, Khoja, run!" cried the distracted wife. "Make haste, I beseech you, and catch that thief of a bird. He has carried off my soap." "O wife!" replied the Khoja, "let him alone. He wants it more than we do, poor fellow! Our clothes are not half so black as what he has got on." _Tale_ 10.--The Khoja and the Wolves. "Wife!" said the Khoja one day, "how do you know when a man is dead?"