Said Al Harith, son of Hammam: Now when I had looked on the garb of the verses, I longed for a knowledge of him who wove it, the broiderer of its pattern. And my thought whispered to me that the way to him was through the old woman, and advised me that a fee to an informer is lawful. So I watched her, and she was wending through the rows, row by row, begging a dole of the hands, hand by hand. But not at all did the trouble prosper her; no purse shed aught upon her palm. Wherefore when her soliciting was baffled, and her circuit wearied her, she commended herself to God with the "Return," and addressed herself to collect the scraps of paper. But the devil made her forget the scrap that I held, and she turned not aside to my spot: but went back to the old man weeping at the denial, complaining of the oppression of the time. And he said, "In God's hands I am, to God I commit my case; there is no strength or power but by God," then he recited: There remains not any pure, not any sincere; not a spring, not a helper: But of baseness there is one level; not any is trusty, not any of worth. Then said he to her, "Cheer thy soul and promise it good; collect the papers and count them." She said, "Truly I counted them when I asked them back, and I found that one of them the hand of loss had seized." He said, "Perdition on thee, wretch; shall we be hindered, alas, both of the prey and the net, both of the brand and the wick? Surely this is a new handful to the load." Then did the old woman hasten back, retracing her path to seek her scroll; and when she drew near to me I put with the paper a dirhem and a mite, and said to her, "If thou hast a fondness for the polished, the engraved (and I pointed to the dirhem), show me the secret, the obscure; but if thou willest not to explain, take then the mite and begone." Then she inclined to the getting of that whole full moon, the bright-faced, the large. So she said, "Quit contention and ask what thou wilt." Whereupon I asked her of the old man and his country, of the poem, and of him who wove its mantle. She said, "Truly, the old man is of the people of Seruj, and he it was who broidered that woven poem." Then she snatched the dirhem with the snatch of a hawk, and shot away as shoots the darting arrow. But it troubled my heart that perchance it was Abu Zayd who was indicated, and my grief kindled at his mishap with his eyes. And I should have preferred to have gone suddenly on him and talked to him, that I might test the quality of my discernment upon him. But I was unable to come to him save by treading on the necks of the congregation, a thing forbidden in the law; and, moreover, I was unwilling that people should be annoyed by me, or that blame should arrive to me. So I cleaved to my place, but made his form the fetter of my sight, until the sermon was ended, and to leap to him was lawful. Then I went briskly to him and examined him in spite of the closing of his eyelids.