She resumed, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Zaynab thus addressed her dam, “Up and play off some feint and fraud which may haply make us notorious in Baghdad, so perchance we shall win our father’s stipend for ourselves.” Replied the old trot, “As thy head liveth, O my daughter, I will play off higher-class rogueries in Baghdad than ever played Calamity Ahmad or Hasan the Pestilent.” So saying, she rose and threw over her face the Lisam-veil and donned clothes such as the poorer Sufis wear, petticoat-trousers falling over her heels, and a gown of white wool with a broad girdle. She also took a pitcher[FN#183] and filled it with water to the neck; after which she set three dinars in the mouth and stopped it up with a plug of palm fibre. Then she threw round her shoulder, baldrick-wise, a rosary as big as a load of firewood, and taking in her hand a flag, made of parti-coloured rags, red and yellow and green, went out, crying, “Allah! Allah!” with tongue celebrating the praises of the Lord, whilst her heart galloped in the Devil’s race-course, seeking how she might play some sharping trick upon town. She walked from street to street, till she came to an alley swept and watered and marble-paved, where she saw a vaulted gateway, with a threshold of alabaster, and a Moorish porter standing at the door, which was of sandal-wood plated with brass and furnished with a ring of silver for knocker. Now this house belonged to the Chief of the Caliph’s Serjeant-ushers, a man of great wealth in fields, houses and allowances, called the Emir Hasan Sharr al-Tarík, or Evil of the Way, and therefor called because his blow forewent his word. He was married to a fair damsel, Khátún[FN#184] hight, whom he loved and who had made him swear, on the night of his going in unto her, that he would take none other to wife over her nor lie abroad for a single night. And so things went on till one day, he went to the Divan and saw that each Emir had with him a son or two. Then he entered the Hammam-bath and looking at his face in the mirror, noted that the white hairs in his beard overlay its black, and he said in himself, “Will not He who took thy sire bless thee with a son?” So he went in to his wife, in angry mood, and she said to him, “Good evening to thee”; but he replied, “Get thee out of my sight: from the day I saw thee I have seen naught of good.” “How so?” quoth she. Quoth he, “On the night of my going in unto thee, thou madest me swear to take no other wife over thee, and this very day I have seen each Emir with a son and some with two. So I minded me of death[FN#185]; and also that to me hath been vouchsafed neither son nor daughter and that whoso leaveth no male hath no memory. This, then, is the reason of my anger, for thou art barren; and knowing thee is like planing a rock.” Cried she, “Allah’s name upon thee. Indeed, I have worn out the mortars with beating wool and pounding drugs,[FN#186] and