Then said she:——I have heard, O auspicious King, that Hasan al-Habbal thus continued his story:—When I had put the Ashrafis a-bottom the jar of bran, my wife came in and I said naught to her of the two friends or of aught had happened, but I set out for the Bazar to buy hemp. Now as soon as I had left the house there came, by evil fate impelled, a man who sold Tafl, or fuller’s earth,[24] wherewith the poorer sort of women are wont to wash their hair. My wife would fain have bought some but not a single Kauri[25] or almond had she. Then she took thought and said to herself, “This jar of bran is here to no purpose, I will exchange it for the clay,” and he also, the Tafl-seller, agreed to this proposal and went off taking the jar of bran as the price of the washing-earth. Anon I came back with a load of hemp upon my head and other five on the heads of as many porters who accompanied me; and I helped them off with their burthens and, after storing the stuff in a room, I paid and dismissed them. Then I stretched me out upon the floor to take rest awhile and looking towards the corner where once stood the jar of bran I found it gone. Words fail me, O Prince of True Believers, to describe the tumult of feelings which filled my heart at the sight. I sprang up with all speed and calling to my wife enquired of her whither the jar had been carried; and she replied that she had exchanged its contents for a trifle of washing clay. Then cried I aloud, “O wretched, O miserable, what hast thou done? thou hast ruined me and thy children; thou hast given away great wealth to that clay-selling fellow!” Then I told her all that had betided me, of the coming of the two friends and how I had hidden the hundred and ninety Ashrafis within the bran-jar; and she, on hearing this wept sore and beat her breast and tore her hair crying, “Where now shall I find that clay-seller? The wight is a stranger, never before did I see him about this quarter or this street.” Then turning to me she continued, “Herein thou hast dealt right foolishly, for that thou didst not tell me of the matter, nor didst place any trust in me; otherwise this mishap would never have happened to us; no, never.” And she lamented with loud lamentation and bitter whereat I said, “Make not such hubbub nor display such trouble, lest our neighbours overhear thee, and learning of our mishap peradventure laugh at us and call us fools. It behoveth us to rest content with the will of Almighty Allah.” However the ten Ashrafis which I had taken from the two hundred sufficed me to carry on my trade and to live with more of ease for some short while; but I ever grieved and I marvelled much anent what could be said to Sa’di when he should come again; for inasmuch as he believed me not the first time I was assured in my mind that now he would denounce me aloud as a cheat and a liar. One day of the days the twain, to wit, Sa’d and Sa’di, came strolling towards my house conversing and, as usual, arguing