adjoining saloon. It behoveth us to climb over by the roofs."
So they clomb over the roofs and coming down through the sky-
light, [FN#210] saw him naked and flogging himself and asked him,
"What aileth thee, O Khalifah?" He answered, "Know, O folk, that
I have gained some dinars and fear lest my case be carried up to
the Prince of True Believers, Harun al-Rashid, and he send for me
and demand of me those same gold pieces; where upon I should
deny, and I fear that, if I deny, he will torture me, so I am
torturing myself, by way of accustoming me to what may come."
The merchants laughed at him and said, "Leave this fooling, may
Allah not bless thee and the dinars thou hast gotten! Verily
thou hast disturbed us this night and hast troubled our hearts."
So Khalifah left flogging himself and slept till the morning,
when he rose and would have gone about his business, but
bethought him of his hundred dinars and said in his mind, "An I
leave them at home, thieves will steal them, and if I put them in
a belt [FN#211] about my waist, peradventure some one will see me
and lay in wait for me till he come upon me in some lonely place
and slay me and take the money: but I have a device that should
serve me well, right well." So he jumped up forthright and made
him a pocket in the collar of his gaberdine and tying the hundred
dinars up in a purse, laid them in the collar-pocket. Then he
took his net and basket and staff and went down to the Tigris, --
And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her
permitted say.

When it was the Eight Hundred and Thirty-sixth Night

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that Khalifah
the Fisherman, having set his hundred dinars in the collar-pocket