In my first lucid interval I looked round, and saw that I had been removed from the khan to a wretched hut.

An old woman, who was smoking her pipe in the farthest corner of my room, informed me that I had been sent out of the town of Grand Cairo by order of the cadi, to whom the merchants had made their complaint.

The fatal chest was burnt, and the house in which I had lodged razed to the ground.

'And if it had not been for me,' continued the old woman, 'you would have been dead probably at this instant; but I have made a vow to our great Prophet that I would never neglect an opportunity of doing a good action; therefore, when you were deserted by all the world, I took care of you.

Here, too, is your purse, which I saved from the rabble--and, what is more difficult, from the officers of justice.