and came in to me and said, “Expend these moneys, O our lord, upon thy health.”  He did the same on the third day and the fourth, making the boys contribute much coin and presenting it to me; and on such wise he continued till the tenth day, when he brought the money as was his wont.  At that time I happened to hold in my hand a boiled egg which I purposed eating, but on sighting him I said in myself, “An he see thee feeding he will cut off the supplies.”  So I crammed the egg into my chops—­And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased to say her permitted say.  Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, “How sweet is thy story, O sister mine, and how enjoyable and delectable!” Quoth she, “And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night, an the Sovran suffer me to survive?” Now when it was the next night and that was

The Three Hundred and Sixty-fourth Night,

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 the Schoolmaster said to himself, “If the Monitor see thee eating the egg now in thy hand he will cut off the supplies and assert thee to be sound.”  So (continued he) I crammed the egg into my chops and clapped my jaws together.  Hereupon the lad turned to me and cried, “O my lord, thy cheek is much swollen;” and I, “’Tis only an imposthume.”  But he drew a whittle[FN#140] forth his sleeve and coming up to me seized my cheek and slit it, when the egg fell out and he said, “O my lord, this it was did the harm and now ’tis passed away from thee.”  Such was the cause of the splitting of my mouth, O our lord the Sultan.  Now had I cast away greed of gain and eaten the egg in the Monitor’s presence, what could have been the ill result?  But all this was of the weakness of my wit; for also had I dismissed the boys every day about mid-afternoon, I should have gained naught nor lost aught thereby.  However the Dealer of Destiny is self-existent, and this is my case.  Then the Sultan turned to the Wazir and laughed and said, “The fact is that whoso schooleth boys is weak of wit;” and said the other, “O King of the Age, all pedagogues lack perceptives and reflectives; nor can they become legal witnesses before the Kazi because verily they credit the words of little children without evidence of the speech being or factual or false.  So their reward in the world to come must be abounding!"[FN#141] Then the Sultan asked the limping man, saying, “And thou, the other, what lamed thee?” So he began to tell

The Story of the Limping Schoolmaster.[FN#142]