“They have stolen them both from me,” lamented the witless one, and he wept bitterly.
Again the Jinn bobbed down, and this time he brought up two sticks with him. He gave them to the fool, and impressed upon him very strongly on no account to say: “Strike, strike, my little sticks!”
Mehmed took the sticks, and first he turned them to the right and then to the left, but could make nothing of them. Then he thought he would just try the effect of saying: “Strike, strike, my little sticks!” and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than the sticks fell upon him unmercifully, and belaboured him on every part of the body that can feel—the head, the foot, the arm, the back—till he was nothing but one big ache. “Stop, stop, my little sticks!” cried he, and lo! the two sticks were still. Then, for all his aches and pains, Mehmed rejoiced greatly that he had found out the mystery.
He had no sooner got home with the two sticks than he called together all the villagers, but said not a word about what he meant to do. In less than a couple of hours everybody had assembled there, and awaited the new show with great curiosity. Then Mehmed came with his two sticks and cried: “Strike, strike, my little sticks, strike, strike!” whereupon the two sticks gave the whole lot of them such a rub-a-dub-dubbing that it was as much as they could do to howl for mercy. “Now,” said Mehmed, who was getting his wits back again, “I’ll have no mercy till you have given back to me my little table and my little mill.”
The people of the village, all bruised and bleeding as they were, consented to everything, and hurried off for the little table and the little mill. Then Mehmed cried: “Stand still, my little sticks!” and there was peace and quiet as before.
Then the man took away the three gifts to his own village, and as he now had money he grew more sensible, and there also he found his brother. He gave all the buried treasure to his brother, and each of them sought out a damsel meet to be a wife, and married, and lived each in a world of his own. And there was not a wiser man in that village than Mad Mehmed now that he had grown rich.
THE GOLDEN-HAIRED CHILDREN
Once upon a time, in days long gone by, when my father was my father, and I was my fathers son, when my father was my son, and I was my father’s mother, once upon a time, I say, at the uttermost ends of the world, hard by the realm of demons, stood a great city.
In this same city there dwelt three poor damsels, the daughters of a poor wood-cutter. From morn to eve, from evening to morning, they did nothing but sew and stitch, and when the embroideries were finished, one of them would go to the market-place and sell them, and so purchase wherewithal to live upon.
Now it fell out, one day, that the Padishah of that city was wroth with the people, and in his rage he commanded that for three days and three nights nobody should light a candle in that city. What were these three poor sisters to do? They could not work in the dark. So they covered their window with a large thick curtain, lit a tiny rushlight, and sat them down to earn their daily bread.