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 Abu Kasim the Drummer continued to the Sultan; I resolved to throw it into some dark hole or out-of-the-way place; and presently I came to the watercloset of the Hammam and cast it into the conduit saying, "Now shall none ever see it again; nor shall I be troubled with its foul aspect for the rest of my life." Then I returned home and abode there the first day and the second, but about noon on the third a party of the Governor's men came and seized me and bore me before him; and no sooner did he see me than he cried out, "Throw him!" Accordingly they laid me out at fullest length and gave me an hundred cuts with a scourge[FN#252] which I bore stoutly and presently said, "O my Sultan,[FN#253] what be the cause of this fustigation and wherefor do they oppress me?" Said he, "O man, the conduit[FN#254] of the jakes attached to the Mosque was choked by thy slipper and the flow, unable to pass off, brimmed over, whereby sundry houses belonging to the folk were wrecked."[FN#255] I replied, "O my lord, can a slipper estopp the flowing of a water that feedeth a Hammam?" Thereupon the Governor said to me, "Take it away and if any find it in his place and again bring me a complaint thereanent, I will cut off thy head." So they haled me away after tossing my slipper to me, and I repaired to the Efendi[FN#256] of the town and said to him, "O our lord, I have a complaint against this Papoosh which is not my property nor am I its owner: prithee do thou write me a deed to such purport between me and the Slipper and all who pass down this road." The Efendi replied, "O man, how shall I write thee a deed between thee and thy Papoosh, which is a senseless thing? Nay, take it thyself and cut it up and cast it into some place avoided of the folk." Accordingly I seized it and hacked it with a hatchet into four pieces which I threw down in the four corners of the city, saying to myself the while, "By Allah, I shall nevermore in my life hear any further of its adventures;" and walked away barefoot. But I had thrown one bit under a bridge that crossed a certain of the small canals; and the season was the dries, wherefore it collected a heap of sand which rose thereupon, and raised the pile higher until the archway was blocked up by a mound. Now when the Níl[FN#257] flooded and reached that archway the water was dammed up and ceased running so the townsfolk said, "What may be the matter? The Nile-inundation hath reached the bridge but cannot pass under it. Come let us inspect the archway." They did so and presently discovered the obstacle; to wit, the mound before the arch which