and the three sat down to the tray wherefrom each took a biscuit and an onion. The Kazi and the negress ate all their portions, but the bride could not swallow even a third of the hard bread apportioned to her; so she rose up, heartily cursing her father's ambition in her heart. At supper-tide it was the same till the state of things became longsome to her and this endured continuously for three days, when she was ready to sink with hunger. So she sent for her sire and cried aloud in his face. The Kazi hearing the outcries of his bride asked, "What is to do?" whereupon they informed him that the young woman was not in love with this style of living.?And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased to say her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, "How sweet is thy story, O sister mine, and how enjoyable and delectable!" Quoth she, "And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?" Now when it was the next night and that was The Three Hundred and Eighty-seventh Night, Dunyazad said to her, "Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night!" She replied, "With love and good will!" It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that the bride was not in love with the Kazi's mode of living; so he took her and cut off her nose and divorced her, falsely declaring that she had behaved frowardly. On the next day he proposed for another wife and married her and entreated her in like fashion as the first; and when she demanded a divorce, he shredded off her nostrils and put her away; and whatever woman he espoused he starved by his stinginess and tortured with hunger, and when any demanded a divorce he would chop off her nose on false presences and put her away without paying aught either of her marriage settlement or of the contingent dowry. At last the report of that Kazi's avarice came to the ears of a damsel of Mosul-city, a model of beauty and loveliness who had insight into things hidden and just judgment and skilful contrivance. Thereupon, resolved to avenge her sex, she left her native place and journeyed till she made Tarabulus; and by the decree of the Decreer at that very time the judge, after a day spent in his garden, purposed to return home so he mounted his mule and met her half-way between the pleasance and the town. He chanced to glance at her and saw that she was wondrous beautiful and lovely, symmetrical and graceful and the spittle ran from his mouth wetting his mustachios; and he advanced and accosting her said, "O thou noble one, whence comest thou hither?" "From behind me!" "Connu. I knew that; but from what city?" "From Mosul." "Art thou single and secluded or femme couverte with a husband alive?" "Single I am