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THE COURTEOUS JUDGE

acquaintance, a man of decent birth, but poor, by trade a dragoman, who had acquired a reputation for unusual wisdom. When he had nothing else to do, he came to me unfailingly, wherever I might chance to be established or encamped. He was sitting cross-legged in a corner, smoking his narghîleh, capriciously illumined by thin slants of light, alive with motes, from the Venetian blinds. He seized upon the postscript, crying:—

‘It is good advice. Why not, indeed? Let us approach the judge.’

Therewith he coiled the tube of his narghîleh carefully around the bowl thereof, and, rising with the same deliberation, threw upon his shoulders a white dust-cloak, then looked at me, and questioned: ‘Are you ready?’

‘But I do not know the judge.’

‘No more do I. But that, my dear, is a disease which can be remedied.’

Without much trouble we found out the judge's house. A servant told us that his Honour had already started for the court. We took a carriage and pursued his Honour. At the court we made

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