Page:Arabian Nights (Sterrett).djvu/281

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the body, and then Ali Baba perfumed it with incense, and wrapped it in the burying clothes with the accustomed ceremonies. Not long after the proper officer brought the bier, and when the attendants of the mosque, whose business it was to wash the dead, offered to perform their duty, she told them that it was done already. Shortly after this the imaun and the other ministers of the mosque arrived. Four neigh­bors carried the corpse to the burying-ground, following the imaun, who recited some prayers. Ali Baba came after with some neighbors, who often relieved the others in carrying the bier to the burying-ground. Morgiana, as a slave to the deceased, followed in the procession, weeping, beating her breast, and tearing her hair. Cassim’s wife stayed at home mourning, uttering lamentable cries with the women of the neighborhood, who came, according to custom and joining their lamentations with hers filled the quarter far and near with sounds of sorrow.

In this manner Cassim’s murder was hushed up by Ali Baba, his widow, and Morgiana, his slave, with so much cleverness that nobody in the city had the least knowledge or suspicion of it. Three or four days after the funeral, Ali Baba removed his few goods openly to his sister-in-law’s house, in which it was agreed that he should in future live; but the money he had taken from the robbers he conveyed thither by night. As for Cassim’s warehouse, he intrusted it entirely to the management of his own son.

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