to me, and I have more right to him than anyone else."

The news of the colt's disappearance soon reached his owner's ears. He
assembled the chiefs of the tribe, and told them what had happened. They
sent to Jahir, and he was reproached bitterly. "Jahir," they said, "you
have not suffered, yet have done injustice, in that you carried off that
which belonged to another man." "Say no more," answered Jahir, "and
spare me these reproaches, for, by the faith of an Arab, I will not
return the colt, unless compelled by main force. I will declare war
against you first." At that moment the tribe was not prepared for a
quarrel; and several of them said to Jahir: "We are too much attached to
you to push things to such an extreme as that; we are your allies and
kinsmen. We will not fight with you, though an idol of gold were at
stake." Then Kerim, son of Wahrab (the latter being the owner of the
mare and colt, a man renowned among the Arabs for his generosity),
seeing the obstinacy of Jahir, said to him: "Cousin, the colt is
certainly yours, and belongs to you; as for the mare here, accept her as
a present from my hand, so that mother and colt will not be separated,
and no one will ever be able to accuse me of wronging a kinsman."

The tribe highly applauded this act, and Jahir was so humiliated by the
generosity with which he had been treated, that he returned mare and
colt to Kerim, adding to the gift a pair of male and a pair of female
camels.

Dahir soon became a horse of absolute perfection in every point, and
when his master Kerim undertook to race him with another horse, he rode
the animal himself, and was in the habit of saying to his antagonist,
"Even should you pass me like an arrow, I could catch you up, and
distance you," and in fact this always happened.