letter to her father, who sent her brother to kill her, and bring him a bottle of her blood.  But her brother, although he thought the walling up of the door was a mere presence, could not find it in his heart to kill her, but abandoned her in the desert, and filled the bottle with gazelle blood.  When the young girl awoke, she wandered to a spring, and climbed into a tree where a prince who was passing saw her, carried her home, and married her.  She had two sons and a daughter, but one of their playmates refused to play with them because they had no maternal uncle.  The king then ordered the wazir to escort the princess and her three children to her father’s village for a month; but on the road, the wazir made love to her, and she allowed him to kill children in succession to save her honour.  At last, he became so pressing that she pretended to consent, but asked to quit the tent for a moment, with a cord attached to her hand to prevent her escape.  But she untied the cord, fastened it to a tree, and fled.  As they could not find the princess, the wazir advised the soldiers to tell the king that a Ghuleh had devoured the children, and fled into the desert.  The princess changed clothes with a shepherd boy, went to a town, and took a situation in a cafe.  When the wazir returned to the king, and delivered his report, the king proposed that they should disguise themselves and set out in search of the princess and her children; and the wazir could not refuse.  Meantime, the brother of the princess had admitted to her father that he had not slain her, and they also set out in search of her, taking the Kazi with them.  They all met at the cafe, where she recognised them, and offered to tell them a story.  She related her own, and was restored to her friends.  They seized the Kazi and the wazir, and sent for the old woman, when they burned them all three, and scattered their ashes in the air.

VII.—­Histoire du prince qui apprit un metier.

A prince named Mohammed l’Avise went to seek a wife, and fell in love with the daughter of a leek-grower.  She would not accept him unless he learned a trade, so he learned the trade of a silk weaver, who taught him in five minutes, and he worked a handkerchief with the palace of his father embroidered upon it.  Two years afterwards, the prince and the wazir took a walk, when they found a Maghrabi seated at the gate of the town, who invited them to take coffee.  But he was a prisoner (or rather a murderer) who imprisoned them behind seven doors; and after three days he cooked the wazir, and was going to cook the prince, but he persuaded him to take his handkerchief to market where it was recognised, and the prince released from his peril.  Two years later the king died, and the prince succeeded to the throne.  The latter had a son and daughter, but he died when the boy was six and the girl eight, warning the boy not to marry until the girl was married, lest his wife should ill-use her.  After two years the sister said, “Brother,