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he tied up the horse and remained. When he arose next morning he found the cave empty, but his mare still tethered in the same place where he had put her before lying down to sleep.

Without mishap he rode back to his home, where his wife welcomed him with the news that all the things which had been missing had reappeared in the night as miraculously as they had vanished. Her joy was increased by the sight of the mare. Her husband, who had had no breakfast, asked for food; when she at once produced a dish of lentils mixed with rice, explaining, as she did so, that she had cooked it the day before, but not being hungry herself, had put it by for his return. Thereupon she uncovered the dish, to start back in surprise. “What is this?” she exclaimed. “When I put this dish away yesterday, it was full and carefully covered, and yet as you see somebody has had a taste of it. It cannot have been the cat, for, though she might have moved the cover, she could not possibly have replaced it.” The young man was himself surprised when his wife said this, till, examining the dish, he knew it for the same from which he had eaten at the request of the Jân. This fact threw a new light on his strange experience. “My dear wife,” he cried, “I now know the secret of our late misfortunes. It is that we have neglected a pious custom of our fathers, to name the name of Allah at all seasons. Our things were stolen by the Jân, through that neglect. Let us mend our ways henceforth.” Needless to say, from that day forward the couple were careful to ask the Divine