stay there almost three weeks, their money was soon gone, and they reduced to their former want: not knowing how to live, in spite of the severe prohibition they had received from Babekan, they Refolved to go back to Bagdad: they went to their former landlady, and begged her to go once more to their brother, in order to persuade him, if she could, to take them into his house, or at least to give them a little money to defray the charge of their journey.
The poor woman could not refuse to do them that service; she went to Babekan's house, and being informed at his shop that he had been gone twelve days to Balfora, to fetch several bales of merchandises, she returned immediately to tell this news to her guests, who were so hard pressed by their necessity, that they went themselves to implore the assistance of their brother'rs wife.
Nohoud could not help knowing them; they resembled Babekan so exactly, that there was nobody but who would have mistaken each of them apart for him ; but though he had so strictly commanded her not to let them into her house, she was touched with their poverty and tears; she entertained them, and set some victuals before them. It was now dark night; and Ibad and Syabouk had scarce satisfied their first hunger, when somebody rattled at the door; the voice of Babekan, who was not to have returned in three days longer, was a thunderbolt to his wife and brothers; they turned as pale as death, and Nohoud, who did not know where to put them to conceal them from her husband's fury, thought at last of hiding them in a little cellar behind five or six tubs of Brandy.
Babekan grew impatient at the door; he knocked loader and louder every moment; at last it was
