no more letters may reach you from Masrur. I see how you take all
my monies and give them to him; so all that I miss I shall
recover from you: and I shall see if Masrur will profit you or
have power to deliver you from my hand." Then he repaired to a
blacksmith, after stripping her and her damsels of their silken
apparel and clothing them in raiment of hair-cloth, and bade him
make three pairs of iron shackles. When they were ready, he
brought the smith in to his wife, having said to him, "Put the
shackles on the legs of these three slave-girls." The first that
came forward was Zayn al-Mawasif, and when the blacksmith saw
her, his sense forsook him and he bit his finger tips and his wit
fled forth his head and his transport grew sore upon him. So he
said to the Jew, "What is the crime of these damsels?" Replied
the other, "They are my slave-girls, and have stolen my good and
fled from me." Cried the smith, "Allah disappoint thy jealous
whims! By the Almighty, were this girl before the Kazi of
Kazis,[FN#359] he would not even reprove her, though she
committed a thousand crimes a day. Indeed, she showeth not
thief's favour and she cannot brook the laying of irons on her
legs." And he asked him as a boon not to fetter her, interceding
with him to forbear the shackles. When she saw the blacksmith
taking her part in this wise she said to her husband, "I conjure
thee, by Allah, bring me not forth before yonder strange man!"
Said he, "Why then camest thou forth before Masrur?"; and she
made him no reply. Then he accepted the smith's intercession, so
far as to allow him to put a light pair of irons on her legs, for
that she had a delicate body, which might not brook harsh usage,
whilst he laid her handmaids in heavy bilboes, and they ceased
not, all three, to wear hair-cloth night and day till their
bodies became wasted and their colour changed. As for the