The next moment he sprang from his stool with astonishing agility, spluttering and cursing. The liquid was bitter in the extreme, the taste it left in his mouth most horrid.
"Now I know I have been hoodwinked," he screamed in rage, and he dashed toward the outer door.
"Stay, stay—what ails thee?" cried Ben Maslia.
"Stop, stop," echoed the servants, as Abi Fressah commenced to run.
The cry was taken up in the street by those who saw a fat man panting along in the darkness, pursued by a number of servants.
"Stop thief!" was the cry of one man in his excitement. The town guards heard, and without any ado they seized Abi Fressah and hauled him off to the jail. In vain he begged for mercy and struggled for freedom.
"If thou wilt not behave, we shall use force," the guards said, and they beat him with staves.
At the jail, Abi Fressah was flung into a cell, and there, on a bed of straw on the ground, he spent a horrible, sleepless night. He ached in every bone in his body, he was bruised all over, and his hunger was such that he felt he had never eaten in his life. His reflections were sad, as you may well imagine, and they led him to a vow that never again would he seek the hospitality of his friends. He realized at last that he had made himself obnoxious and had been cleverly and deservedly well punished.
Even yet his sufferings were not at an end, for next morning, when he was released and sent for his physician, the latter prescribed a diet of gruel and barley water for a whole week!