She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the Baghdad man who owned the maid entered Bassorah, he was perplexed for not knowing the Hashimi's house. "So I accosted" (said he) "a grocer and, taking of him inkcase and paper, sat down to write. He admired my handwriting and seeing my dress stained and soiled, questioned me of my case, to which I replied that I was a stranger and poor. Quoth he, 'Wilt thou abide with me and order the accounts of my shop and I will give thee thy food and clothing and half a dirham a day for ordering the accompts of my shop?'; and quoth I, ''Tis well,' and abode with him and kept his accounts and ordered his income and expenditure for a month, at the end of which he found his income increased and his disbursements diminished; wherefore he thanked me and made my wage a dirham a day. When the year was out, he proposed to me to marry his daughter and become his partner in the shop. I agreed to this and went in to my wife and applied me to the shop. But I was broken in heart and spirit, and grief was manifest upon me; and the grocer used to drink and invite me thereto, but I refrained for melancholy. I abode on this wise two years till, one day, as I sat in the shop, behold, there passed by a parcel of people with meat and drink, and I asked the grocer what was the matter. Quoth he, 'This is the day of the pleasure-makers, when all the musicians and dancers of the town go forth with the young men of fortune to the banks of the Ubullah river[FN#50] and eat and drink among the trees there.' The spirit prompted me to solace myself with the sight of this thing and I said in my mind, 'Haply among these people I may foregather with her I love.' So I told the grocer that I had a mind to this and he said, 'Up and go with them an thou please.' He made me ready meat and drink and I went till I came to the River of Ubullah, when, behold, the folk were going away: I also was about to follow, when I espied the Rais of the bark wherein the Hashimi had been with the damsel and he was going along the river. I cried out to him and his company who knew me and took me on board with them and said to me, 'Art thou yet alive?'; and they embraced me and questioned me of my case. I told them my tale and they said, 'Indeed, we thought that drunkenness had gotten the better of thee and that thou hadst fallen into the water and wast drowned.' Then I asked them of the damsel, and they answered, 'When she came to know of thy loss, she rent her raiment and burnt the lute and fell to buffeting herself and lamenting and when we returned with the Hashimi to Bassorah we said to her, 'Leave this weeping and wailing.' Quoth she, 'I will don black and make me a tomb beside the house and abide there and repent from singing.'[FN#51] We allowed her so to do and on this wise she abideth to this day. Then they carried me to the Hashimi's house, where I saw the damsel as they had said. When she