present day; but it, has many of the features of
the Arabian Nights, setting the supernatural of
course on one side. The chief characters are
persons still living, or who were living very
recently; though the names have been altered
to avoid giving offence. The reader will observe
in it one of those sudden revulsions to which
we have already alluded; but the motive is
noble, being based on the principles of charity
and forgiveness.

All Mahmûd was a native of Tabriz, and was
of respectable parents. When he attained
the age of twenty five, his father, Haji Husein
Rabahim, wished liim to become a pilgrim,
though he had already visited the shrines at
Meshed Ali and Kerbella; so, having been
supplied with a horse and all the necessary accoutrements,
he was despatched with the great caravan
leaving Persia, for Mecca in the autumn of every
journey to the Holy City was successfully
performed. After passing Hamadan on their
homeward journey from Mecca, he and three
others were lagging a little behind the caravan,
when they were suddenly attacked by a party of
Kirmanhah Kurds, cut off from succour, and
carried away. The brigands, after plundering their
captives of all they possessed, detained them as
slaves; and the remainder of the pilgrims, not
daring to go in search of their missing companions,
proceeded onward to Tabriz, and there gave out
a prodigious story, to the effect that the absent
companions had been carried off by the Genii or
Evil Spirits of the desert. This was the news
with which Haji Husein Rabahim was met,
when, with hundreds of his friends, mounted
on richly caparisoned horses, he rode out beyond
the gates of the town for the purpose of
welcoming his son home. "Your son," he was
told, in answer to inquiries, when he had looked
in vain for the features of Ali Mahmûd in the
long cavalcade of dusty and sunburnt pilgrims—
"your son was carried off by the Genii near
Hamadan. He proved insincere to the words
of the Prophet (may his name be exalted!), who
thought fit to deliver him into the hands of the
Evil Spirits." The blow fell with so sudden a
shock on poor Haji that he was seized with a
dizziness, and fell from his horse; and the animal,
rearing atthe same moment, clashed his hoof
into the old man's skull. Two hours after, the
remains of Haji Husein Rabahim were deposited
in their last resting-place.

In the mean while, Ali Mahmûd remained in
captivity and in fetters, until, one day, being
allowed comparative liberty, he was sent out on
to the plains to attend a herd of cattle. He had
a horse under his charge, and, leaping on its
back, he made a bold dash for freedom, galloped
incessantly for many hours, and at length
reached the town of Kirmanshah. Here he sold
the horse, and, with the proceeds in his pocket,
set out on foot for Teheran, where he Iearnt
for the first time the lamentable fate that had
overtaken his father, and was also informed that
Ihe prince governor of Tabriz had appropriated
all the property of Haji Husein Rabahim after
his death. All Mahmûd was mightily enraged
against the prince; but, previous to taking any
steps towards the recovery of the plunder, he
was compelled by the Persian usage to go
through the ceremony of mourning for the
death of his parent. As soon, however, as the
hired howlers had howled their appointed time
(namely, eight and forty hours, allowing for
necessary rest and refreshment), the son, winding
a red pocket handkerchief round his head,
according to the custom of his country at the
termination of the period of mourning,
commanded the professional gentlemen to leave off
crying: which they did with great alacrity, He
was then free to devote himself to the absorbing
question of recovering his property; and, having
procured a scribe, he concocted a petition to the
prime minister, setting forth the act of spoliation
of which he complained. This he himself
carried to the great man's receiving-room; but
an awkward fate awaited him. The minister
had no sooner read the petition than he wrote
on it the following order to the chief of his
Ferrashes—officers who are entrusted with the
double duty of going before illustrious persons on
ceremonial occasions, and of administering the
bastinado to culprits sentenced to that punishment—
"Give the bearer one hundred sticks on
the soles of the feet. He has accused a prince
of the blood royal of eating money and property."
Ali Mahmûd delivered the petition, got " the
sticks," and limped away in great wrath.

Reduced almost to poverty, he led for several
years a wandering and unsettled life; speculated
in several ways; sometimes made money, and
sometimes lost it; and at length found himself a
ruined man, on the very verge of starvation. He
liad married, but his wife was dead, leaving him
an only child, a little girl. After one of his
unsuccessful expeditions in search of the means of
life, he returned home, and found the child crying
for food. He rushed forth in a state of
desperation, and, lurking about a baker's shop
till he found an opportunity, stole a loaf of
bread, and carried it to his famishing offspring.
Then he sat by the little girl's bedside, thinking
what he should do to save her and himself from
death. It was midnight; and the darkness and
silence seemed to put evil suggestions into the
head of Ali Mahmûd. His memory went back
to the days when he had been the enforced
companion of robbers, and he thought how ill he had
prospered in comparison with them. He thought,
too, of the flagrant injustice that had been
perpetrated against him by the prince who had
seized his hereditary property, and how well that
dishonesty had turned out for the wrong doer,
and how ill for him. He chewed the cud of
these bitter reminiscences till it seemed to him
as if knavery were the only successful thing,
and as if Heaven designed the honest to suffer
the penalty of their virtue; and presently a
project struck him. Some years previously,
when he had been a vendor of tobacco, he had
sold some of his commodity to one Hassan, a
rice merchant, who, opening a large box in a
private room of his house, paid him out of some
money contained in a white canvas bag, of which